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FeedA Guide’s Summer Recap
As the season began to wind down I started to think a lot about how many days I had remaining in Wyoming. How many more trips would I take? It would be a shock when that last day would come and reality would sink in that I was again unemployed.
At the same time, I started to realize that my summer flew by about as quickly as I expected it to. I think I accomplished most of my goals and did exactly what I wanted to. I know that Wyoming is a rare, but real place. Before I got here it was just an idea in my head. How it would look, how it would smell, and how it would affect me were all questions that would be answered. I am leaving with a little bit of Wyoming in my memories, friends and pictures to bring with me wherever my next stop might be.
Hey, I got to meet Neil Armstrong this summer. Yes, the first man on the moon.
I enjoyed hanging out with the other guides, especially the good-looking female guide. She was a handful, but always entertaining. I learned a lot from a lot of people, and am proud to say that I think I helped those people learn things from me as well.
I took the college lifestyle with me to Wyoming when the sun went down, and definitely enjoyed myself, often times too much (hello, Guiding Hungover). I went to some great hole-in-the-wall bars although considering my location the bars were Wyoming “hotspots.” One had an amazing mount behind the bar of two mountain lions facing each other with a downed fawn in between them. It was even complete with bats, a raccoon and three field mice hiding in some grass.
On one of my off days, another guide and I went exploring for new spots and came across one of the most beautiful stretches of water I have ever seen. Was it private property? I don’t know, those signs were just so far away they were hard to read. The other guide, Wyn, pulled out a beautiful wild tiger trout that made my jaw drop. A tiger is a hybrid of a brook trout and brown trout. It had bright red fins and a green body that was accented with stripes all up and down its sides. It was without a doubt the most amazing fish I have ever seen.
The wildlife was beautiful but so was the sky. Being from Texas I of course thought that there was no prettier sunset than in Texas, but I quickly realized how ignorant I was. I watched a lightning storm move over a mountain and close in on me, and I was too amazed at the sight of it all to realize I was suddenly in a pretty dangerous situation.
The words I write down to describe my summer can not do justice to the reality of being there. It’s amazing that picking up a fly rod almost eight years ago led me to a place like this.
Posted at 02:08 PM | Permalink
When wading boots are never dry, when passion — some would say obsession — for fly-fishing is so great, wet boots are a way of life. Wet Boots (the blog) is for anglers who know fly-fishing is far more than a way of catching fish. Wet Boots. No bait fishermen.
