Best Fishing Travel Tip – Book Early

Despite what some doomsayers assert about the state of the economy, you wouldn’t think anything was off if you just looked at the travel sector.

I don’t mean to make light of anyone’s struggles, but have you been to an airport lately? Packed.

Have you tried to book a fishing vacation with a premier outfitter during prime season? Tough.

Hanna and I have definitely seen it lately. We’ve had mid- to large-sized groups who wanted to go to El Salto or Picachos in January or February and we’ve had to split them up. Or friends who wanted two boats at Casa Vieja Lodge in mid-April and they couldn’t line up perfectly. Demand for the good places often exceeds supply.

The solution to this is obvious: Book early. Sometimes even that doesn’t help. Some premier fisheries, particularly those with regulated/limited numbers of space (like certain trout and salmon beats, or places like La Zona, where you can only fish a certain number of days per week), book up years in advance. You may have to give up your first-born or your left nut to get a prime date for your group there. Even in fisheries that aren’t so constrained, it’s a limited resource. Lodges may reserve last-minute spaces for their long-term or “Platinum” guests.

If you know what you want, sign up now.

Do Your Research

Busy guides, lodges and outfitters tend to be busy for a reason – generally, it’s that they have a proven product in a premier location. That doesn’t mean that a startup or less popular operation can’t or won’t give you a fantastic experience, but longevity is a predictor. There are no shortages of resources out there today that can help you determine if a particular trip is right for you – everything from social media to YouTube to the web to trusted friends can offer up information and opinions.

Once you settle on where you want to go, make sure you understand the intricacies of timing. You may want to experience El Salto’s exceptional topwater bite, and that can happen in May or June, but it’s much more likely to occur from October to March. If you’re going tarpon fishing, try to understand tides and moon phases and how they affect the bite. Is it an El Niño year? That could change your timing, or cause you to move your trip up or back a year. It’s not just a matter of purchasing early, it’s a matter of purchasing the right thing early.

How Early is “Early”?

Believe it or not, Hanna and I have a general framework of places we want to go that works about three years out. It’s not set in stone, and there aren’t necessarily reservations for each place (especially for the ones that are further out) but each decision has a domino effect on the others.

For example, we want to go to Greece for our 20th anniversary in August of 2025. The actual trip may be as much as a month before or a month after the anniversary date but it nevertheless is likely to happen in that general window. What does that mean for us? Well, if we’re on a plan to go back to Alaska every second or third year, it’s going to be tough for us to go to Alaska in July or August and then Greece in August or September – at least not without compromising our jobs. We could go to Alaska in June, but that would impact our usual May/June trip to El Salto. So we’d probably have to move either El Salto or Alaska to a different time of year or a different year altogether (easier to move time of year for Mexico, which has a 10 month season, than Alaska, which is more like three or four months).

I recognize that the situation described above is truly a first-world conundrum, but even if you don’t have an ambitious fishing travel schedule already lined up, you may have other events that impact when you can go – or when you want to go. For example, an upcoming graduation might inspire a particular reward, but limitations on spring break or winter break might limit when your kids can travel. Or maybe your occupation prevents you from going at certain times of year – you need to lock in when you can go sooner rather than later, or risk not going at all in a given year.

And of course there’s the matter of age. On one end, none of us are getting any younger – I hope that I am able to wrestle giant yellowfin tuna or GTs when I’m 80, but I’m not counting on it, so get those physically taxing trips in while you can. On the flip side of that, if you want to take a bucket list trip with one of your kids, do it when they’re physically able to do so, but don’t wait until life, jobs, dating, college and so on get in the way.

Advantages of Booking Early

Beyond the obvious benefit of locking in your preferred guide, boat or lodge at the optimal time, there are other advantages to booking early. For example, if you’re stretching your budget to make the trip happens, it allows sufficient runway to get the rest of your money together. If you need specific equipment, it gives you time to accumulate that, too.

Furthermore, there are advantages in terms of maximizing the experience itself. Are you going to be using standup gear for 800-pound bluefin tuna? You have no excuse not to get into the gym and get yourself into the best possible physical shape. Are you going to need to make an 80-foot cast with your fly rod into the sun with a stout crosswind for spooky bonefish? You can work extensively on your casting so when that opportunity arises you are less likely to flub it.

Problems Associated With Acting Soon

The sooner you act the better for general purposes, but you are taking some risks any time you act far in advance of a trip. There could be inconveniences, like a change in flight schedules that make getting there a hassle. Or your tastes could change – maybe instead of chasing peacock bass in the Amazon now you’d rather go wine tasting in Napa? Or your partner could bow out.

Most of those seem unlikely or fixable, but there are some more problematic possibilities. First, what if the guide, outfitter or lodge takes your money and then goes belly up? We work exclusively with long-term properties and while we can’t say that’s an impossibility, it seems highly unlikely. In cases with a lot of lead time it makes sense to purchase travel protection from a company like Global Rescue to protect yourself from this possibility.

Or what if your schedule changes or for some other reason you’re unable to make it? Most desirable locations will allow you to move your reservation to a different date (especially if you’re giving up a prime time), or they’ll even give you a whole or partial refund if you act soon enough. They understandably have to cover their own asses, so they likely can’t give you a full refund if you back out 48 hours in advance and they cannot fill your slot. Be reasonable.

Finally, there’s always a chance that the entire fishery will go to crap. There could be a die-off, or there could be an environmental disaster that hurts it. Alternatively, there might be a regulatory hurdle – some friends headed to Colombia this winter had their trips canceled when the government passed a policy banning sportfishing. There could even be a political hurdle. For example, if you booked a taimen trip to Russia six years ago for 2024 you’re almost certainly out of luck. At the same time, with a reasonable amount of research, you can identify not only the fisheries that tend to be consistent, but also the longest-standing and most reliable operators within that ecosystem.

On the whole, we strongly believe that it makes the most sense to lock in your preferred times as soon as you know them, because once they’re gone, they’re gone, and the one thing you can’t get back is time.