A few weeks ago, ESPNOutdoors writer/king/playah Brett Pauly ran excerpts of my book, So Many Fish So Little Time. My old friend and radiohost Chip Howard saw the article and since we'd been out of touch the last few years (he didn't know I had a new book out), he contacted me and set up a radio interview for June 12th.
If you've ever done a radio interview, they're not cushy, not nearly as much as a television or on-camera interview. I like to see who I'm talking to -- I like to NOT be on a telephone where it sounds like the interviewer is underwater a thousand miles away.
I listen to the lead-in chatter and I'm on -- Hey Mark, long time no see, not since Valle Vidal a decade or more ago . . . and so on. I have no idea if he wants me to take over the interview and throw out my best stuff or if even he's read the book (actually, I know Chip and is prepared), no notion of how long the interview will last. And Chip asks tough questions, thought provokers and surprises and that sort of thing. Then it's over. Thanks Mark and where can our listeners buy your book? No asking me to come over and sit breakthrough-comedian style by Johnny Carson, no way to know if it went well for them or me.
I was interviewed by quite a few radio hosts for this book this last year and the two questions each of them asks are "Mark, what are your five favorite places on earth to fish?" (my somewhat-thought-out, somewhat stock answer is, in no order: Yellowstone National Park, the Pyrenees, British Virgin Islands, southwest Colorado and British Columbia, Canada.) and "What is the one place on earth you could take someone who has never fished and that place would guarantee a great fishing experience? That second question is much easier to answer: Yellowstone National Park. There is no place on earth quite like it for the volume of great water, the quality of the fishery, the aspect of native trout, and the wildlife/landscape factor. Some are disappointed my personal top 5 doesn't include other places I've been, the classics around the world like Christmas Island (too many serious anglers), Amazon (it's awfully dicey with some operators still), Alaska (too pat of an answer, of course it's a top 5 location) or Bahamas (I'm going back this fall but it's also a cliche answer.) My faves are places where I feel comfortable, and it's nothing I can put my finger on --- a place just feels like home. I also tend to like wild trout and small rivers, wilderness and solitude.
I always leave interviews wishing I had included this or amended that.
I also wonder if anybody's listening out there when a radiohost interviews a fishing writer.
www.sports.espn.go.com/outdoors/general/columns/story?columnist=pauly_brett&page=g_blog_Backcasts_archive_thru-080516
www.kzne.com/chip/
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