By Gregg Rockett
I regularly seek out the expertise of a fly-fishing guide, most often to assist in navigating unfamiliar waters, but also to facilitate an improvement in my skills. I probably have more than 100 experiences of fishing with a guide over 30+ years of fly-fishing adventures, and most of these have been very good, especially at the beginning of my fly-fishing evolution.
My first instruction was from a fly shop owner and guide in the Lake District of England. Bob Carlson was a patient and skilled instructor who helped me develop my early skills, particularly fishing with an indicator in still water. I also benefited from expert insights into tight-line nymphing in British Columbia waters with Clint Goyette some 20 years ago.
While it is important that the guide helps in solving the water and hooking up fish, a good portion of the reward for me is enhancing my fly-fishing skills, as well as having a few good laughs with the guide. This is how I view the return on investment for the money paid. A good guide should ask you about your skill level before taking you out on the water. They should also ask you if there is any technique you would like to improve upon. In the absence of either, you may be taking on a guide that is more interested in the fee than the client.
A surprisingly unrewarding outing involved a float trip down the renowned Madison River a few years ago. Before this float trip, I had very little experience fly-fishing from a boat in fast-moving water, and it showed in my technique. I was warned by my fishing companion that the guide could be harsh at times, but I was not prepared for him to be unforgiving to the point of condescending, relentlessly barking out commands as if scolding a child. The Madison did not fish well that day, and there was a very high volume of boat traffic, which compounded the unpleasantness of the whole experience. I am unlikely to do a float trip on the Madison ever again.
Recently, I had an experience that outdid the float trip on the Madison to a considerable degree. A guide that I identified for a two-day excursion in Nagano, Japan, turned out to be completely unsuited for his trade. He grunted frequently, spent most of the time on the bank behind me smoking, and seemed monumentally unhappy to be out fishing. He made no attempt to develop any level of rapport or camaraderie and did not ask a single question about me over two days. In this guide, the outing was clearly transactional and did not merit the requisite guidance to correct any shortcomings in terms of technique or approach.
This guide’s website was very professional and contained plenty of testimonials, so I am not sure how I could have vetted him any better. Given the barriers of language-based search engines, it is frankly challenging to undertake extensive research on fly-fishing opportunities in this part of the world. As such, I have learned a good lesson about how one should go about selecting a fishing guide.
My early experiences were a product of leveraging referrals. The aforementioned guide from the Lake District was well known in the region. My brother-in-law had also grown up there and visited his shop many times during his younger days. So, it was a safe bet that the guiding experience would be worthwhile. For my first visit to British Columbia some twenty years ago, I had the luxury of a couple of weeks in Whistler and set myself up with three different fishing guides. One of those, Clint Goyette, I continue to fish with on regular return trips.
Referrals from outfitters and fly shops are another option, and I have generally had good success in this regard. A professional shop should recognize that a guide is an extension of the service they offer and only refer those who will reflect well on the shop. A shop in Cashiers, North Carolina, set me up with one of the nicest guides I have ever fished with. Although this guide was young, he was enthusiastic, a great conversationalist, and provided me with good skills in fishing a hopper/dropper set up. In contrast, on a different excursion the same week with an even younger guide from a shop in Bryson City, he admitted at the start of the day that he only uses the cheap gear when guiding clients and spent most of the day boasting about his guiding prowess.
Guess which of these outfitters I will not be recommending in the future?
I am a member of my local chapter of Trout Unlimited (TU) and thus have reliable resources around me, which include professional guides. In addition to that, TU has a robust online discussion forum whose participants are more than willing to share experiences and provide sage advice. I have leveraged the Community Forum on numerous occasions to seek feedback on destinations, products, and guiding referrals, and I find the resource to be invaluable and dependable.
So, reflecting on how I could have better vetted the Nagano area fishing guide, I probably should have queried the TU Community Forum on the chance that anyone had experience with this particular guide. In addition, I probably should have set up an interview with the guide in advance to ask him about where and how we would fish and about his guiding philosophy. I think a discussion of the gear that the guide will employ would also be appropriate (my BC guide only uses ultra-premium gear when we nymph for bull trout, which highlights the professional approach). This up-front interaction may have tipped me off to the approach and personality of the guide, giving me the opportunity to potentially seek out a different option.
In the future, and in the absence of another reliable method of vetting the guide, I think a phone interview will be the way to go. Tight Lines!
