Good Old Guys, Albis and Outright Lies

by Bob Scammell, Canadian Fly fishing Editor

Editor's note; If you can read the titles in Table of Contents below, sample the two chapters in our fly fishing section and do not buy, you don't deserve it.

“Good Old Guys, Alibis and Outright Lies” is Bob Scammell’s selection of his best humor pieces from 30 years of outdoor writing. Although he does the serious stuff, too, Scammell believes outdoors people are far too serious about things that other people find ridiculous who only have their own word for it that they, themselves, are sane. Here Scammell tells the tragic stories of the victims of outdoors addictions: moose hunting, ice fishing and fly tying. There is much in “Good Old Guys Alibis and Outright Lies” of the unnatural world: horses, huntin’ uncles, fishin’ cats, good old farm boys and other wild creatures. But no outdoors book would be complete without some of that great how-to- stuff, and “Good Old Guys, Alibis and Outright Lies” is full of it: how to get (and stay) lost, how to get permission and how to beg forgiveness if you don’t, how to give up chewing snoose, even how Scammell taught his Dad to fish.

Outdoors humorist Bob Jones, who won the 1995 Book Award of The Outdoor Writers of Canada for his “Tangled Lines and Patched Waders,” says of Scammell’s new book: “This lexicon of alibis, fabrications and downright distortions of the truth can be adapted for personal use, guaranteeing you will never again be without an excuse, no matter how illogical, for failures afield or afloat.”

Table of Contents

Good Old Guys
Tracking Laughter: An Introduction
How I started the Guv Fishing Again and Went to Hell, Maybe
My Outdoors Career
Paying those Huntin' Uncle Dooz
Alberta, Jugheads and Me
Vested Interests
Zero Impact Logging
It's fishing--Cats and Dogs!
Serious What-Tail Bizness
Down on the Farm Boys
The Guv's Old Tackle Box

Alibis
Gunner's Alibi
Pheasant Fillosopher
How to Eschew Snoose
Jigger's Elbow, Fly Tier's Finger and Other Outdoor Afflications
Bonasa Days--Grousing in Paradise
Miracle Moose and Mal Demise
Getting Found Out
There's No Free Mutt
The Cuzif Comundrum (A Bluffer's Guide to Gutting)
How to Get Permission

Outright Lies
How to Beg Forgiveness
Truth in Angling
I and the egg (Caviar Emptor, Ernie)
Surviving the Wild Auction
Hard Water Porn
The Where-to of How-to
Hunting the Moggie
Reasonable Moose vs. Moron in a Hurry
Stalking the Wild Bargerian (Or the Fifteen Loonie Misunderstanding)
Advanced Tie Flying