Guides Who’ve Gone Above and Beyond
I do not think I could be a fishing guide. Fish catching and locating skills aside, you have to be a tremendous people person to survive the experience long-term without either killing someone or taking a cheese grater to your eyeballs. There’s not just the weather, mechanical issues and finicky fish to do you in, there’s also that portion of your clients – a small percentage, I would hope – who are never satisfied. You could catch a hundred fish and they’d be mad they didn’t catch a trophy, or they might catch the fish of a lifetime and they’re mad they didn’t catch more. It would not be a good fit.
Even if it is a good fit, it’s definitely not a way to get rich or famous.
Fortunately, there are people for whom it is a way of life, and Hanna and I have been lucky to fish with a handful who’ve checked off all of the boxes for excellence. We’ve also been spoiled in terms of how much effort they put in. The musky guides we fish with on St. Clair will gladly stay out sun-up to sun-down during the longest days of summer. Those are often 16 or 18 hour days of slinging lures that weigh a pound apiece in rough water. They can handle it. If you can’t, they’ll be glad to let you go take a nap at midday and then resume the slugfest until dark.
The guides we fish with at Anglers Inn El Salto and Picachos are likewise workhorses. Hanna and I are often the first clients on the dock in the morning and the last one to the dock in the evening, and it often feels like some of our favorite guides are upset when we dawdle even the slightest bit.
A few years ago when we fished with a guide in Venice who put in exactly 8 hours on the water – the bite could have fired up a minute before the clock struck and he still would’ve made a beeline for the ramp – I was horrified. I posted about it on social media and a lot of people, both clients and guides, said that was a standard workday. Like I wrote above, we’ve been lucky to enjoy a bunch of guides who really like their jobs and put in max effort.
One of those guides was Steve Grant on the Bitterroot River in Montana. Not only did he put us on fish and coach us through the whole process, but he did it with lots of fly line whipping around the tight quarters of his raft. Even more impressive was the fact that he brought his dog Pako along with us.
Pako was a special case, a rescue who when Steve and his wife first got him was afraid to step on the kitchen floor. He had to be slowly coaxed to do so with pieces of cardboard to step on. Steve and his wife patiently brought this dog along to trust humans, and then what did he do? He stuck the poor canine in the boat with a couple of anglers. He apparently trusted his coaching and boat-positioning skills so much that he trusted we wouldn’t hook Pako and undo all of that hard work. Our one instruction on the day was not to dangle a fly in front of the dog’s mouth. We survived – and so did Pako.
At Anglers Inn in Mexico our guides are not just people-pleasers and fish-catchers, but also incredibly talented at conserving our tackle. None may be better than Lacho, who has undoubtedly saved me about $35,816 in otherwise lost crankbaits. When we first met him in 2013, we were there with former Forrest Wood Cup champion Kevin Hawk. Kevin brought a sawed off casting rod and a spare reel spooled with 100 lb. brand to free his snagged crankbaits. He still struggled. Yet Lacho could take a simple rock, tie it to a piece of mono and slide it down the line, and free the bait. Later he got a Master Lock for the same purpose, and it worked well, but not necessarily better than rocks, which are cheap and available in abundance.
Chichi Rodriguez is another guide who always gives a one-hundred percent effort from start to finish. On that same 2013 trip my friend Terry Conroy had a good fish smoke his big spinnerbait in a field of stick ups. The fish then proceeded to have his way with him, seemingly wrapping his fluorocarbon around every log, branch and bush in a two mile radius. Eventually the line just stopped moving beneath an underwater log, although we could feel that the fish was still attached. Many guides would’ve tried for a bit, then given up. Not Chichi. He stripped to his skivvies, followed the line down and came back up with the bass.
That’s the same treatment that Hanna and I got on our first trip to Brazil in 2011. I was dead set on catching some fish on the famous topwater prop baits, but after the first day I had only one missed blowup on it. When a small peacock exploded on it the following morning, I don’t know which one of us was more surprised. As with Terry’s largemouth, the fish got into some deep stickups and could not be extracted. Like Chichi, our guide Bashim went into the drink – and remember, there are all sorts of piranhas, snakes and caimans in the Rio Negro, and came back up with my fish.
Indeed, from the standpoint of pure physical exertion the Brazilian guides may be the hardest working of any we’ve fished with. The rivers in the Rio Negro region rise and fall 30 to 40 feet a year. When the water is up, the peacocks get back into isolated lagoons. When it falls back out, they may get stranded there, without much to eat. It can pay off handsomely to get in there – you may find an empty lagoon, or you may find one with “landlocked” starving peacocks ready to blast any bait you throw at them.
The first time our guide Marzo pulled into a little cut in the riverbank, we had no idea what he was doing. When he pulled out a machete, we figured we were gator bait, but he started chipping away at branches and trees and logs. Then he’d get out of the boat and walk it forward, using all of his might to gain some forward momentum. Each time we figured we’d hit the point of utter impassability, he’d push and pull some more and we’d go further. Sometimes he’d leave us sitting there and walk through the jungle himself to find the best route forward. After a half hour or so of that on the first day, we tried to tell him that he didn’t have to do it, but he wouldn’t turn back.
Eventually these narrow pathways would widen into beautiful openings. I don’t know how he still had the fortitude to work after doing that for an hour in the brutal Amazonian heat, but he did. He never stopped chopping, and neither did we.
Please remember: If your guide does an acceptable job, be sure to tip. And if they do an exceptional job, be sure to reward them commensurately.
