Three weeks and three days ago She Who Must Be Obeyed (SWMBO), my lovely and faithful wife of thirty-three years, packed her bags and up and left me for the South.
Now before certain members of the extended family (her side of course) break out their best champagne and high five one another to the point of serious injury, a point of clarification is in order.
SWMBO and I have for many years consider Montana home country and had planned to spend several years in the Northwest before heading back to Southwest Montana this summer or fall. That said, it so happens she’s a particularly gifted manager as well as trainer/teacher, which, making a long story short, led to a leadership opportunity with a very well known hunting and fishing retailer.
Said opportunity was coupled with an immediate need for her to engage; within six days of a formal offer she was on a flight to (of all places) Alabama to jump feet first into the fire.
We’d never in our wildest imaginations envisioned heading to Alabama, though I have in this process been able to confess a deep, dark personal secret – I’ve always wanted to live (for a while) in the heart of the South.
Over the years we’ve made a slew of friends via Chi Wulff, many of whom live in the South. And while of course the lens of our relationships has been hard focused on fishing, to the person these men and women have been some of the happiest, most polite and more versatile fishers we’ve run across (they can handle big reds in the bayou, tarpon in the Gulf and 7x-bound tiny dries chasing picky eaters on the Missouri, tasks that not all of our trout-myopic brethren can accomplish with ease).
(And then there’s the food. Anyone who’s read the Friday Feast for a while knows we dig Southern Comfort Food.)
So while SWMBO did indeed leave for roughly a month, we stand (Lord willing and the creek don’t rise) to be reunited in about a week as I make the drive down starting a couple of days from now.
Chi Wulff is about to undergo yet another reshaping, we’re reinventing the wheel with a decidedly bipolar focus: Jake, Shane and the occasional Quinn will be manning the Northern Rockies team and I’ll be the lost, sunburned, fat guy wandering the bayous, rivers, flats and bays of our new Southern camp.
Before you scorn the fly fishing of the South, here’s eleven reasons we think heading South for a while ain’t such a bad idea –
- Redfish. Mobile Bay will be a hop, skip and a jump away, NOLA a short drive and Florida an easy reach. For Montanans who drive three hours for dinner distances look very manageable, and sometimes the food wasn’t even that good. Nuff said.
- White Sand. The white sands of the relatively unpressured Alabama coast beckon. Shhhhhhh, it looks like that’s supposed to kept a secret.
- Tarpon. They’ll be right in the new neighborhood. Dammit, does one need both a ten and a twelve weight?
- Other Gulf salt water species of note (and I’m sure there are plenty more) – snook, speckled trout, flounder, cobia, jacks, sharks, tuna, drum, etc, etc.
- Bikini season duration. Alabama > Montana >>>>>>>>>> Alaska > Washington.
- Sunny days (corollary to item above). Very nearly twice the purely sunny days in Mobile (102) as compared to Seattle (52).
- There’s trout in them thar hills. The hill and mountain country of Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina and more are on the list. Now where the hell is R & R’s phone number.
Gulf seafood. We’ve particularly missed Gulf shrimp, fresh picked Gulf blue crab, red snapper and really really good gumbo (aside from mine of course). My MaMa (maw-maw) would be proud. (image courtesy of Tulane)- New relationships. As an outsider to the process I’m not sure it’s kosher for me to mention SWMBO’s new company by name here, though suffice it to say it’s H2’s, dog beds and ascots all around. (Cough, cough.) Word is she has one hell of a fishing manager on the leadership team; I think his name is Scott but I’m going to call him Yoda.
- What do big redfish and fat Missouri rainbows have in common? We’ve been playing around the edges with some regional hosted travel; now we have a slew of really nifty, big time locations to engage with. More to come by the early fall.
- The next best thing. If we’re not living in Montana (that’s still a ‘dammit’), we have the next best thing – family living there. You guys need a guest room with a private bath by the way…
Hot damn y’all.
