10/24/2026
🇺🇸 A big thank you to our partners at Vicious Fishing for this incredible feature on ArmyBassAnglers owner and CEO, Shawn Dalrymple.
This is one of several articles highlighting the people behind ArmyBassAnglers, their stories, and the experiences that shaped their leadership and passion for the outdoors.
We appreciate Vicious Fishing for helping tell these stories and supporting our mission!
🇺🇸 SUPPORT. DEFEND. FISH. 🎣
DECISIONS WE MAKE OUTSIDE
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There are some lessons you don't learn sitting in a classroom. You simply learn them with your boots in the dirt. With cold hands wrapped around a fishing rod. With a r***e slung over your shoulder and somebody else's life depending on the decision you make next.
For Shawn Dalrymple, those lessons came from both places. A kid from North Alabama, Dalrymple never imagined his life would take him around the world, much less that he would spend 22 years in the United States Army and retire as a Lieutenant Colonel. He certainly didn't know growing up his military career would eventually lead him to another kind of service. Helping veterans find their way back to the outdoors through fishing.
Today, Dalrymple is the owner and CEO of ArmyBassAnglers, an organization built around a simple idea: Get veterans outside, get them around people who understand where they've been and give them something to look forward to.
Vicious Fishing, a company with a deep commitment to America's military veterans, serves as the organization's line sponsor. If you sit down with Dalrymple and talk long enough, the conversation inevitably gets bigger than fishing.
It gets into leadership. Fear. Responsibility. The decisions people make when nobody is standing over their shoulder telling them what to do. Perhaps most importantly, what happens when the structure that defined your entire adult life suddenly disappears.
“I did 22 years in the military and the first five years were very action packed,” Dalrymple said. “I'd never thought that a kid from North Alabama would ended up doing what I did.”
-A DIFFERENT KIND OF EDUCATION-
Dalrymple's military career put him in places where decisions weren't theoretical. They had consequences. Big ones, actually. Over the course of his career, Dalrymple was involved in 85 firefights. Yet he never once fired his personal weapon.
“The first time I was ever fired at, I was 23 years old,” he said.
That might sound strange until you understand what his job was. Leadership in that environment wasn't about having the loudest voice. It wasn't about proving how tough you were. It was about making the right decision when the wrong decision could cost somebody their life. That experience shaped the way Dalrymple sees leadership today and it also shaped his view of something that seems increasingly rare in modern life: decision making.
“Decision making is such a lost art now,” Dalrymple said. “Those who spend time outdoors are fantastic decision makers, I've learned. When you played outside as a kid, the first thing you did every single day was make a decision about what you were going to do. Most kids these days don't make those decisions anymore.”
Anyone who has spent enough time on a lake knows exactly what he means. Fishing is a constant series of decisions. Where do you launch? Which creek arm do you run to? Do you fish shallow or deep? Do you stay with a pattern that's producing or abandon it when conditions change? Do you pick up and move or give the spot another 20 minutes?
There isn't always a right answer. There is only the information you have, the conditions in front of you and the decision you make. That's part of what makes the outdoors so valuable. It requires participation.
The woods don't care about your résumé. The lake doesn't care about your title. A fish doesn't care whether you're a general, a private, a CEO or somebody who punched a clock all week just to get outside for a few hours. Out there, you make a decision and live with it. For veterans, that can be especially meaningful.
-THE WEIGHT OF SERVICE-
Dalrymple's military career was not without danger. At one point during his service in Afghanistan, there was a $50,000 bounty on his head.
“There was a bounty on my head in Afghanistan because I was wreaking so much havoc on them with the 82nd Airborne Division,” he said.
It's the kind of sentence that can stop a conversation cold. Dalrymple doesn't tell the story for dramatic effect, though. He talks about it with the perspective of somebody who has had years to process what happened and why he did what he did.
“I have zero regrets,” he said. “Everything I did was above board. I refer to 2:22 Samuel when it comes to the things I've done.”
For Dalrymple, the past isn't something to run from. It's something to understand and process. That doesn't mean the experiences of military service are easy to carry. In fact, one of the things Dalrymple emphasizes is that fear is a normal part of being human.
“If people say they're not scared, they're either lying or have lost their moral compass,” he said. “You can become numb and once you don't have emotion, it becomes very dangerous.”
That understanding of fear says a lot about his approach to veterans. The goal isn't to pretend the difficult parts never happened. Instead, the goal is to create a place where veterans can continue moving forward. For Dalrymple and many others, that place happens to be on the water.
-FINDING A WAY HOME-
Army Bass Anglers wasn't born out of a desire to create another fishing organization. It came from recognizing something that happens to every service member eventually. After years of having a mission, a unit, a chain of command and a group of people who depend on you, suddenly the structure is gone.
“The day you leave the military, it becomes a very emotional event,” Dalrymple said.
That's difficult to explain to someone who hasn't experienced it. For decades, the military can become more than a career. It becomes a community. Your friends are often the people who serve beside you. Your schedule revolves around the mission. Your identity becomes intertwined with the uniform. Then one day, you turn it in. Army Bass Anglers was built to help fill some of that gap.
“Army Bass Anglers started for like-minded individuals to enjoy the outdoors together,” Dalrymple said.
That's where a company like Vicious Fishing fits naturally into the picture. Fishing line is one of those pieces of equipment most anglers don't think about until they absolutely need to. It connects everything to special and possibly healing moments.
For Army Bass Anglers, Vicious is more than a product sponsor. Its support reflects a shared appreciation for the men and women who have served and for the outdoors as a place where people can reconnect. There is something fitting about that relationship because veterans understand the importance of trust and anglers understand it, too. You trust your equipment because when the moment comes, there isn't time to wonder whether it will work.
-THE QUIET SIDE OF LEADERSHIP-
For all of Dalrymple's military experience, one of the most revealing things he says about himself has little to do with combat but instead personality.
“I struggle with being an introvert,” he said. “I have to work very hard with not being unapproachable. Most military leaders are introverts by nature.”
That might surprise people who meet the owner and CEO of an organization like Army Bass Anglers. Leadership is often portrayed as charisma led by the guy who walks into a room and immediately takes control of it. Dalrymple's experience suggests something different, however.
Leadership can be quiet, observant or listening more than talking and thinking through a situation before acting. That's another reason the outdoors have always resonated with him. There’s a quietness to fishing that doesn't exist in many other parts of modern life.
You can sit on the bow of a boat before sunrise and hear nothing but the wind moving across the water. Watch fog lift off a creek arm. Maybe spend an entire morning making decisions without saying much at all. For someone accustomed to leading soldiers, that quiet can be valuable.
-MORE THAN CATCHING FISH-
It would be easy to look at Army Bass Anglers and see fishing tournaments. But the real destination is connection. The veteran sitting in the passenger seat of a boat talking to somebody who understands why the transition home can be difficult. Maybe the former soldier making decisions on a lake without anyone giving him an order. The camaraderie that comes from spending a day outside with people who share something deeper than a love of catching bass.
Quite honestly, it’s the reminder that service doesn't necessarily end when the uniform comes off. Dalrymple spent 22 years serving his country and now he's spending his time helping other veterans find community. The setting and mission may be different but the underlying principle is remarkably familiar. Just take care of your damn people.
