Eating my words...

By Alan Dubberley
Alan is the deputy director for Wyoming Travel & Tourism. These writings reflect my personal experiences in Wyoming. To say he is a little biased towards Wyoming is an understatement. Still, everyone can have the experiences told here. Just get out there and enjoy the Wyoming outdoors.

I told my girlfriend once that I really didn’t know much about Wyoming and that I never planned to live there, much less wear cowboy boots, or a cowboy hat. That girlfriend hung around to see me eat those words. She married me in 1990 and we moved to Wyoming in 1998. She grew up here, I didn’t.

She also loved it when my new boss at the tourism office in Cheyenne told her that I would need to have cowboy boots and a cowboy hat and the wardrobe to fit my new position as Deputy Director of the Cowboy State’s tourism office. I have to say, it ain’t half bad. The hat is great, the boots are comfortable (for the most part), and who can complain about wearing jeans to work sometimes (at least when its not 100 degrees out).

What does this all have to do with fishing? Not much, just thought it was a funny story even if I tell it on myself. But, it does help to understand who I am and why I am passionate about this state as well as fishing its fine waters.

I grew up in a military family and lived in 6 different places before graduating from high school. My folks? They were raised in Georgia, so far south, it was almost Florida. We visited every single summer and Christmas and fished there as often a possible. Some of my best fishing memories are from those visits. Freshwater, saltwater, bass, flounder gigging (another story, another time), seining for mullet, cast nets for shrimp, speckled trout, red bass, the Withlacoochee River (true name). Incredible fishing. Still you ask, how does this relate to my passion for Wyoming and fishing?

I watched my granddaddy wave at every car we would pass when riding through town in his little green 1976 Toyota pickup. He knew everyone in his little town of Quitman, Georgia. It impressed me so much that my granddaddy was so popular as to know everyone and they would know him. I longed for that kind of life, slower, knowing people, having friends who didn’t move every three years because of their dad’s job. Little did I know, military or not, people move and leave and life goes on.

But in Wyoming, everyone knows everyone, or at least someone knows who you know. Know what I mean? Wyoming has been called the biggest small town in the world. I love it that I have friends all over this state. People I have met through my awesome job of promoting Wyoming to the world and others I have just met. It doesn’t get any better than Wyoming.

Sorry for the digression, I just feel it adds to the story. Now you know a little more about me and why I want to write about Wyoming and why I call it home after making such stupid teenage remarks.

A little fishing now… earlier this summer, I had the pleasure of fishing Boysen reservoir near Shoshoni, Wyoming on a trip to see my in-laws in Lander. The absolutely, 100% best malts in the world at Yellowstone Drug, by the way. Burgers are good too.

Since I am boatless on this trip, I fish the dam at Boysen in the evening on into night for walleye. The walleye were slow this night, I caught one early, about 7 pm then a couple more later in the evening. But at 9 pm it was like someone turned on a rainbow switch. Boysen has a nice population of rainbow trout from 2-4 pounds and they went nuts on me. I caught six between 9 and 10 pm. Each going aerial at least 3 feet as soon as hook planted firmly in flesh. It was fantastic. Fishing memories are, without a doubt, unscripted. Very rarely does a plan work exactly how you work it out in your mind.

I ended up catching 2 walleye and a sauger (a 23 inch sauger mind you) that night for the frying pan. But the true memory was the trout and the acrobatic circus they put on for me that early July evening at Boysen.

Nothing better than watching a Wyoming sun set over the bluffs around a gorgeous body of water, catching fish and having all of your senses alive, but feeling totally relaxed.