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roblyon

PERSONAL INFORMATION

Nickname:

roblyon

Real Name:

Rob Lyon

Homepage:

http://lyonexpeditions.com/

Email:

Contact Reviewer

Occupation:

Writer/Expeditionary

Location:

San Juan Islands

Biography:

Rob is a professional free lance photo-journalist. He lives with his artist wife, Pamela, in the San Juan Islands where they use alternative energy, grow a huge garden and have a tight counter-culture community. Rob’s work appears at the national level as feature fly fishing, river running, and sea kayaking articles, short fiction and gear reviews. Writing is pretty much a tool to fund his addiction and adventure journalism makes it possible to spend a month on the BC coast each year, to run the high desert rivers of the northwest: the Snake, Salmon, Deschutes, Owyhee, and to get up in the mountains.

Rob has two books published to date: Rivers of Dreams, and Journal of a Naked Fly Fisherman, and is currently rambling out a Seacoast Manifesto. Historically, his book focus has been fly fishing adventure, but the last chapter of his ‘Journal’ segues into a current passion, wilderness sea kayaking. In this unedited version of a story that appeared in Fly Rod & Reel Magazine over a decade ago, Rob describes his epic 102 day solo kayak odyssey around Vancouver Island—WITH fly rods, of course.

An incisive thinker with a short attention span, Rob is happy if he averages a couple/three quality hours a day of writing. When he’s not writing, he’s working around the place. Island life revolves around routine, seasonal chores: chopping wood, cleaning chimneys, working the garden. In his free time, Rob likes to throw a round of golf with his friends. The course is an ‘object’ course, in deference to Pamela’s artistic sensibilities; no chains and baskets, but rather, simple rock cairns for pins. Disc weight is limited to 125g or less. But it is an awesome course with tees situated on high rock bluffs overlooking a mix of wide open grass fairways, water hazards and orchards. Rob treats the game as he does meditation, as discipline, and plays a round daily, rain or snow.

What makes Rob a savvy gear reviewer is a combination of things. An analytical mind, good writing skills and a sustained opportunity to use the stuff he writes about. In order to properly shake down equipment it needs plenty of repps—stress, strain, wear, exposure from repeated use in conditions it was designed for (and worse). Before he decides to pack a particular piece of gear with him on a trip, he checks it out thoroughly to see if it fills a niche, if it’s the best at what it does, if it does SEVERAL useful things instead of one, and finally, the grand jury of all gear, gadgets and gizmos: IS IT MORE TROUBLE THAN IT’S WORTH?

“Months of planning goes into a major trip and we can get seriously messed up if an important piece of equipment fails,” he tells us. “When something new comes along we check it out here on the island first. Duds are pretty much weaseled out before we leave, although field testing really is the pudding. The gear that works out really well—and some of it that doesn’t—that’s what I write about.”

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the guy knows the secret truth of gear, that the things we use to do the things we love are real and legitimate sources of satisfaction. “Shopping for a new fly rod might not be the same as fishing with it,” he says, “but just thinking about it, sometimes, can get us pretty darn close. The pheromones that fire us up on the river are the same ones that have us drooling in our catalogues. Bottom line, I think this truth is a sacred thing and should be treated as such. Digging our equipment is no substitute for using it, and shopping for gear is like marriage; a smart choice can make all the difference down the road.”

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