I got a question here asking what are the top 5 ways to be successful as a fishing guide. I am going to start at number 5 and work my way up, I’m sure if I got together with some other guides we could come up with way more, but here are my top 5: 

5. Be professional - I wish when I started out that I understood that being a Fishing Guide was a business and that I treated it as such. I thought it was something I would do for a summer and didn’t think of it as a place of business where I needed to show up in a professional manner and be professional with my customers. There are very high profile people with plenty of money but little time. You are trusted with their most valuable asset and you should present yourself professionally. With this in mind marketing is very important and I wish that (if I could go back) I would have studied more marketing in school. 

4. It’s not the biggest or the most - success as a fishing guide is not that you catch the biggest or the most fish. The most important thing you can do is showing your customers a good time. Give them a great experience, this means that they will return to you. That is then how you have a successful business. Have happy customers. 

3. Communication - I wish someone had told me how important this was when I was starting out. This is the difference between being good vs. great. Skills with communication start before you even meet the client in person, they start with how you talk about your services online or on social media, all of this influences expectations of the customers. 

2. Patience - Fisherman have to be patient, naturally, but you need to have patience in terms of running a successful business or being a successful fishing guide. These things take time to build, it’s a business and having patience with putting in years on the job and time on the water is super important. 

1. Hard Work - if someone told me how much work this business would be when I was younger I might not have done it. It is a lot of work and as a guide your work does not start when you get up to go on the water, or when you end the day of fishing. Your work starts hours before the customer arrives, and it ends hours after they leave, you have to clean up and change the rigs on the rods and prepare for the next day. It’s hard work. 

These are the top 5 things I could think of off the top of my head. Of course, in order to be able to do any of these or all of them, you have to know how to take care of yourself (How To Extend Your Guiding Career). Eat well, watch your hydration, learn exercises that will help to reduce over use injuries, get as much sleep as you can and find time to quiet your mind. 

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