The process of hiring a fishing guide or Charter is a personal one and should be reached with much due diligence.
Since you will likely spend the greater amount of the day with this guide it is important to choose wisely. So what do you do? Do you ask your friends if they have hired a guide and who they would recommend? Try doing a search on Google or other search engines? Well, yes to all of this and more.
Asking for referrals from friends is important because as a friend you will no doubt trust your friends comments about this person they suggest. Or in some cases they might say who not to hire. In either case getting their feedback can prove invaluable. But what if you are wanting to hire a guide in an area where you have no friends? Or just don't have the fishing type friends who have previously hired a guide? Well, here are a few things you can do to help yourself hire a well respected Guide that you can feel good about:
1) Referrals from friends, or relatives or even acquaintances. Ask around from people you work with, neighbors, fishing buddies, family members or anyone else you might know who has had a positive experience with a guide.
2) Do some homework online. Check search engines for guides who fish a particular body of water you are interested in going out on. When you find some guides look at their website and look at who they are sponsored by. If they have no sponsors this is a good bet they are new and are not a seasoned guide. If they have well known sponsors this is also a tip that they are well respected and have been guiding for a while. Sometimes this is a good point to start your search.
3) Go to Internet fishing forums if available and read to see if there are any guides who are respected in that particular forum. If so, this is a good indicator that they are well liked and generally perform their services well.
Ok, now you have identified a list of possible guides from which you can narrow down. Consider the following things as tools to help you narrow this list down to a couple:
You must ask yourself these questions first:
1) What type of technique do I want to use in order to catch these fish?
2) Does the guide excel at this technique?
3) Does a newer more expensive boat mean anything to me?
4) Does the age of the guide matter to me?
5) does the gender of the guide matter to me?
6) Am I looking for one big fish or numbers of fish?
7) Does the guide provide trips to target just big fish or just numbers if I ask for that?
8) Do I need to bring anything with me or does the guide provide all of it for me?
9) What happens if the guide cancels my trip?
10) What happens if I cancel the trip early? Do I get a refund of the deposit?
Then when you have answered the above questions you will have a better understanding of what you are looking for in a guide. Then you can begin the interviewing process by asking these questions:
1) How long has this person been a guide?
2) How long have they guided on that body of water?
3) How much do they charge?
4) Who sponsors them?
5) Do they fish in front of me or do they do more instructing?
6) How many people are allowed to fish out of the guides boat?
7) How many hours does the guide keep me out?
8) Why are they a guide? What drives them to be a guide?
9) Are they a full time guide?
10) What kind of set up do they fish with? Ie, what kind of boat do they have and equipment?
When you have narrowed the list down to 2 then ask the guide for referrals and contact those referrals and ask what they liked about this guide and why they would recommend them if indeed they do recommend them.
Then select the guide that you intend on hiring. Have a great time with that guide and remember to tip the guide if he or she has done above and beyond what you expected.
Thank you and God bless.
Keith Tauber
