The Nature Pages

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	The Fly Fisher's Guide to Crimes of Passion More Sedition from the Master of Meander by Seth Norman The Lyons Press, 2004.
	Written in a colorful first person free-casting prose, the 25 essays in this collection cover a wide range of topics and terrain, all tied together like the fisherman's fly around an abiding obsession with the art of angling. A followup collection to the author's "Meanderings of a Fly Fisherman," this book provides more evidence that Seth Norman is one of the masters of the modern-day fish story.		"I know what comes next, so I fumble about in my memory of the day. In this mixed-bag impoundment I've taken some big rainbows and, often in pairs on point a dropper fly, one billion small bass. I found the trout along deepwater drop-offs, in channels between tall weed beds dying in winter. The bass babies were everywhere, obviously, darting out from shreds of cover, five inches long and quick as bats." Carpe Diem 256
	"The Humpy King Meets the Halibut God," for instance, is a fishy tale about a trip to a remote Alaskan fjord, home of the legendary Halibut God that the author -- known by his mates as the Humpy King for his appreciation of the humpback salmon -- hooks from the deck of the fishing boat Steller.
Search our selection channels between tof new, used and out-of-print books.	The simple story of a man catching a fish is embellished with twisted character studies,  bawdy natural histories and numerous autobiographical asides on author's ambitions, achievements and states of mind. As he reels the halibut in close to the boat and takes a full measure of its size, he remembers everyone around him going silent. "I have no idea what the others were thinking, but my mind had fixed on a single idea: You don't catch things like this with a rod. You hunt them with packs of dogs," he writes.		"A towering tree, tall as any this side of the redwoods, rises up from a wild thicket of vines, blackberry brambles, and wet hummocks of high grass. The sun has burned through the early morning clouds, so we're washed in light both brilliant and soft, reflecting green everywhere, light shades of new leaves mingling with the dark survivors of winter. The pond mirrors it all from where we stand, smooth and emerald, district from the color of land around it only for the addition of a cool, slate gray. " A Crime of Passion
	Ranging from Alaska to Malaysia, from graceful fly poles to ugly insects, Seth Norman's free-spirited essays are a good catch for the outdoors reader.