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Hiring Fly Fishing Guides

Spring training is in West Palm Beach, and the games are in the daytime, so I really hadn’t planned to go fishing, but Kris wanted to go, and there you are. I didn’t know if there would be fly fishing in West Palm Beach, I didn’t know what to fish for, so I started hunting around the internet.

The first time I ever fished with a guide was probably 25 years ago, in Idaho, with Kris.  The guide intimidated me, and I thought he would rather have guided someone who knew what they were doing. We fished the Big Wood River, outside of Hailey where Ezra Pound was born.  I knew a good bit more about Ezra Pound than fly fishing.

My second trip with a guide was in Galveston, not long after, with Captain Chris Phillips.  I picked Chris because saltwater fly fishing in Texas wasn’t that common, and in Galveston Chris was it.  I thought Chris liked me a good bit more than I deserved, and I fished with him off and on for 15 years.  He was a legend in these parts, and when he died–eight years ago?–it was the death of a sweet man.

My third trip, with another Texas saltwater guide out of Rockport, was a bust, and I felt cheated.

I’ve fished with lots of guides.  I’ve had young guides who worked hard, old guides who were lazy, and vice versa.  I’ve had knowledgeable guides who taught me a lot, and I’ve even made a few friends.  Whether my guides were good or not seemed somewhat random, but I’ve worked out some guidelines:

  • If they’re in the Orvis lists, they’re likely to be ok.  You know the list, it’s on the Orvis website, and it’s one more thing they sell.  I’m certain the guides pay to be on there, but there seems to be vetting, and I’ve never had a bad guide off the list.  Ever.
  • Local fly shops will recommend good guides.  I’ve had guides who were abrupt, or too young, but I’ve almost always had good luck with the guide if not the fish.
  • Be dubious of the recommendations in your local fly shop of a guide many miles away.  They likely don’t know the guide.
  • A guide’s boat may be a good indication of his quality, at least in saltwater.  Guides with good boats are invested.  They’ve given their craft some care, even before you get there.
  • If a guide is booked for your time slot, ask for a recommendation, but don’t immediately assume their  recommendation is ok.  Guides may fish with a fellow guide or they may only share beers, but they aren’t likely to be guided by a fellow guide.
  • Guides who don’t fly fish may put you on fish, but they may not know what fly to use.  Especially in saltwater I’ve fished from time to time with conventional tackle guys.  It’s never been bad, and they knew the water, but they didn’t necessarily know flies.  I watched thousands of black drum stream by in the 9-Mile Hole near Corpus and had no idea what to throw at a black drum.  Black drum flies are not the same as redfish flies I gather, but you’d think if the guide fly fished I could have caught more than one.
  • When you’re going somewhere, read about the fishing where you’re going.  Check the internet.  Lots of guides write as advertising, and if what they write makes sense, they’re likely to make sense as well.
  • Product endorsements are meaningless for picking guides, but if you want to try a product line fish with an endorsed guide.  It’s a great way to try out equipment.

As for that guide on the Big Wood River, we were setting up rods and he pulled out new tapered leaders and put them on our lines.  He said “I always feel rich when I put on a new leader.” Great line, and something to remember.

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Girdle Bugs

I tried to fish for trout on the Guadalupe Sunday without a split shot, and ran into two problems.  The flow is so slow, and the river is so shallow, that the weight of my attractor–a girdle bug tied on a muddler hook–was still causing too many hangups in the rocks.  I had wrapped them 10 times or so with .025 wire.  I re-tied this week with .015.

It raised a problem for me, how do I tell last week’s girdle bugs, which would be just fine in heavier water, from this week’s girdle bugs?  I searched the internet, where writers suggested you should organize your fly boxes by weight.  Fat chance that.  My fly boxes are filled with good intent, but this week’s organization is largely chaos by the next time I go fishing.  I do manage to keep nymphs in one box, streamers in one, dries in a third, and little tiny things I can’t see anymore in a fourth.  And I like the notion of loading what I actually plan to fish in still another box.  I tied this week’s girdle bugs in brown, which contrasts from the prior week’s black.  Of course that means this week I have no black girdle bugs to fish.

I also had some 5x Umpqua tippet that was rotten.  How old was it? No clue, but it couldn’t have more than a decade. I guess after a few decades none of us are what we were.

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Florida

When I told Kris I was starting a blog, she asked me if it was about baseball. I’m a pretty obsessed baseball fan, but write about baseball? I’ll leave writing about baseball to people with some actual knowledge.

That said, the team of which I am a fan, the Houston Astros, won the World Series last year–you may have heard, but it never gets old in the telling.  Kris goes to most games with me, and we go to a lot of games. At games Kris stops watching by the third inning and reads magazines (pre-internet) or plays Words with Friends (post-internet). From April to October, if I’m not at the game, most nights I watch the television in my office and talk to my friends on the internet about the game’s progress.

A month or so ago Kris announced that we were going to West Palm Beach in February for the first games of spring training.  Kris now is not only a theoretical fan–she goes to games–she apparently wants to go to games.  I doubt she’ll give up Words with Friends though.

I never thought seriously about going to spring training, and I had already booked us to Tampa in June when the Astros play the Rays. It’s apparently the thick of tarpon season, and Kris has caught a tarpon but I haven’t.

We’re flying into Fort Lauderdale on Friday February 23 and flying out the next Sunday.  I’ve booked us a guide for a half day on Saturday morning, one Scott Hamilton at Fly Fishing Extremes.  It’s my first chance at a foreign fish since I started this, and since my January luck with Texas fish has been so poor, it may be my first chance for a fish.

*Actually, during two of the ‘Stros three 100+ loss seasons, 2011-2013, I wrote a weekly game recap on a local website.  They rarely had much to do with the games, but if I may say so myself they were pretty funny. Nothing else about those seasons was funny.

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Guadalupe River Divertimentwo

Today was our 34th wedding anniversary, so we went fishing, again to the Guadalupe. Because it was Sunday Naegelin’s bakery wouldn’t be open so we tried to find a substitute. I haven’t found a kolache shop between Houston and New Braunfels.  I guess that makes sense–it’s German, not Czech, so we stopped in Luling, home of Luling City Market (which is also closed Sundays), at Snowflake Donuts.

They had sausage rolls, which not withstanding common usage are klobansky, not kolache, and they were perfectly ok.  They also had what I’m guessing is the only commercial Buddhist shrine in Luling, a town better known for Catholics and Lutherans.

Vietnamese most likely, and a very nice young woman

We tried a second place in Sattler, Sweeties Donuts.  Again no kolache but again klobansky, and better donuts.

It didn’t have a shrine, but it did have a statue of Buddha.

We stopped in at Reel Fly Fishing Adventures and the youngling at the counter suggested we try someplace I hadn’t fished before, so we went back to Whitewater, which is all things to all people, but also a place to park.

 

Two tests of Texanhood are whether you’ve smoked dope with Willie and eaten at Snows Barbecue.  I’ve eaten at Snows.  The river above whitewater was pretty, and everybody was there.  I thought if I only walked up above the next bend there would be fewer people, but there were more.

 

I found a spot where I was not more than 30′ or 40′ from the nearest angler, and then got passed by two guide rafts, a canoe, and some kayaks.  I did see people catch fish.  I gave up and walked down river which was probably the better choice, but got worried about Kris and went back to the car.  She had lost her nymphs in a tree and was re-rigging, but then somehow she ended up with a prince nymph in her index finger.  She wouldn’t let me take a picture.

We went to target where she bought some razorblades and cut out the hook.  I’m a firm believer in always de-barbing my hooks, especially after watching Kris cut on her finger.  Then we went to Alpine Haus for schnitzel.  Happy anniversary dear.  Once more no fish, but we did get some schnitzel.