We just finished a really big week here at MVF. We did all sorts of fishing in different states, and had a great time doing it.
One very sound piece of advice I would give anyone looking to try some new water and catch fish would be to hire a good fishing guide. Good local fishing guides will help you make sense of a new lake or river.
But how do you choose out of all of the different fishing guides that are advertising their services? A simple online search is definitely not enough, and it won’t help you narrow down the list all that much either. This is especially true if you are going to tackle a big lake like Georgia’s Lake Lanier.
I want to give you the steps that we used to find the fishing guides we decided to hire to take us on our trips. If you follow these steps, weeding through all of the information out there will be a lot easier.
Get Some Local Knowledge
Most big lakes will have a local fishing shop. This is a great place to get not only the latest fishing reports, but also good information on the guides that frequent the shop.
If fly fishing is the game, and you are lucky enough to have a local fly shop near you, this will prove to be a goldmine, and will also usually have several guides operating out of it as well.
I totally understand that the small, locally owned fishing shop is quickly disappearing, though. If you are in this boat, and don’t have the luxury of a local shop, then you need to move on to step two.
Find A Specialty Forum
There are literally hundreds of small, specialty online forums that will be able to help you out. For instance, in North Georgia, we have NGTO. It’s a small forum just for the North Georgia fly fishing community.
A quick search in Google will show you all sorts of these types of forums all over the country, and the world. Sign up, it’s usually free, and post a question asking for a good guide recommendation. These should really help you out because they are just as good as testimonials.
When All Else Fails, Get On The Phone
Make some calls to all the guides on your list. Talk to them a while, and see if you click.
A guide can’t guarantee that you will catch fish, but this step can guarantee that you get along with the guide. Nothing worse than not catching fish and wishing you could throw your guide off of the boat!
I know there is a ton of information out there when looking at fishing guides. I speak from experience when I tell you, these three steps can make sure you save yourself a lot of headaches and get the best guide for the buck!
See ya on the water…