Fishing Guide - Investing in Technique

A fishing guide can change the game.

It was hard not to laugh. We were at the boat dock, in a destination resort area, at the end of a day’s fishing. Almost everyone was complaining how slow it had been. One fisherman after another came in who had been skunked or only taken one fish.

We, on the other hand, had not only limited out, we’d spent much of the day releasing otherwise keeper sized fish.

No, it’s not that Friend Wife and I are fantastically better fishermen. The difference is, we had a guide and the others didn’t. Using specialized techniques, on a lake and fishery he knew like the back of his hand, he’d put us on fish all day.

Fishing guides are often thought of as an extravagance. And, in many ways, they can be. But there are just as many, if not more, times when a guide is an investment in a successful fishing trip.

We all have self-images as fishermen that are belied by the facts. For instance, because we’re hot-shots on our home lake, we think we can fish just as well anywhere. After all, a lake is a lake, and a striped bass (insert trout, musky, largemouth, fish of your choice) is a striped bass.

To some degree that’s true. If you’re a bass fishermen, many of the things you learned on your home waters apply universally. But, as you well know, there are tricks and techniques that work on your lake which do not produce on strange waters. All you need to is extrapolate out---the strange lake you are visiting for the first time also produces to specialized techniques and methods.

That’s when a fishing guide really shines. He or she is on the water all the time, knows what works and doesn’t work, knows how the fish are patterning that day.

You don’t have to hire a fishing guide for the entire length of your trip. But going out with one on the first day can pay off in spades, as you will learn what has to be done. You can then apply those tricks during the rest of your trip.

That is, if you pay attention. If you’re just along for the ride, and do not learn from the experience, then yes, hiring a fishing guide can be an unnecessary expense. No, I take that back If nothing else, you’ll have gotten one great day out of your trip, and that might be worth any cost. But the idea is to learn from the guide; to see where he takes you and understand why those spots are productive; to find the reasons he chooses the baits he recommends and the methods or fishing them.

Learn those lessons and you can apply them the rest of your trip. And yours might be the boat with a limit of fish while all the others are empty.