How to Seek a Good Fishing Guide

A good fishing guide has many duties during the course of the day. But the supreme task is to put you over the fish. He should know where they hold and if they’re on the run where in the runs to fish.

How do you locate a good guide? First the Internet because there should be besides pictures of fishermen holding up monster fish the answers to some very important questions that I will discuss later.

Use the Internet as a weeding out tool narrowing your search to three or four guides. Generally a good place to find all the guides in an area is the local Chamber of Commerce site with links to their websites.

If that doesn’t work a general search of the Web should give you many to pick from but you will have to separate out of those the guide who specializes in the particular river or kind of ocean fishing you are interested in.

Third party sites can be very good an example is Ed Blank’s flyfishingheaven.com although the site is for more exotic locales he has done the legwork for you. The third possibility is the local fly shop here they probably have guides of the own but you can add them to the list of candidates.

The first thing that you need to find out is how much experience the guide has either by conversation or his website. If I were going to hire a guide, I would want him to have at least 12 to 15 years experience on the waters I was going to fish.

Besides the accumulation of knowledge, it shows that he has made a living out of guiding and that is not easy to do. You need a lot of repeat clients and you have to have to find fish.

Next what type of guiding does he do if it is only fly-fishing and you wish to use a spinning rod, he is not the guide for you. Whatever the tackle, will he introduce you to new techniques that will expand your fishing knowledge?

Each good guide has tricks of the trade that you can use on your own. A local guide in my area will give a lesson in spey casting if you desire.

What is policy on catch and release? If you catch that trophy fish will a picture be good enough for you?

Most guides are adamant catch and release advocates because it is in their interest to do so. If you in your conversation with the guide find the your positions only catch and release are different, scratch him from your list. It will only had to disharmony on the trip.

If it is fly-fishing only, will he take a novice under his wing and educate them on the basics of fly-fishing? This takes experience to teach someone the basics of fly-fishing while servicing the other clients.

You would be better served if you enrolled the novice in a fly-fishing class before your trip. Then the guide could point out the nuances of fly-fishing that particular river to all the clients.

Next, although devious is appropriate, give him a chance to lie. Ask how many of the fish you are fishing for did his clients land last year. It is up to you to tell whether or not he is telling the truth.

What is his availability turn the best months of the season? If he is booked up you have a choice to made whether to fish the marginal months with a good guide or take a second tier guide during the peak of the season.

If it my choice I would take a second tier guide during the peak of the season than a great guide during the marginal months. But I would ask the great guide to book you for next year during the peak of the season. If a non-refundable deposit is required, it is your judgment on whether you will be able to make that trip.

Finally talk about rates; on the Trinity River the rates average $400 per boat with two people. If fly-fishing two people are about all you want to have in a boat.

The rates are a little higher with a third person but with four people in the boat, the three clients and the guide, spinning rods are the way to go.

The rate of $400.00 dollars is for a full day on the water generally eight hours. The fishing guide should tell you the length of time that you will be fishing.