General Question about Fishing Guides

I admit I have very limited experience with fishing guides. Once with a very well known fishing guide in Vilas County and another well known guide in Sawyer County. Both of these were ice fishing trips.

My fishing partners and I are not novices. We wanted to experience something different and we were up front and honest with the guide that we wanted to learn as much as we could about techniques, what the guide looks for when he is searching for new spots, baits, etc. 

Honestly, we did not intimate the guides as one guide dropped us off on a spot and we didn't see him more than an hour for the whole 8 hour trip. That includes the drive out to the spot. The other guide who is a very nice man put us on 4 -5" panfish and 20" northerns.  The first guide did clean our catch but scolded us by telling us that we were going to have to keep some fish for pictures. My fishing partner and I were honestly embarrassed being seen in those pictures. The second guide picked us up, dropped us off then picked us up again. 

I have always heard on fishing shows to hire a guide to learn the patterns to look for, what to use and enjoy the experience.

Not boasting at all but my partners and I could have easily done what what we did with the guides by ourselves.

My intent is not to start any arguments or name calling. I would like to know what other people have experienced both ice and open water.

Thank you for your thoughts.

Folk's s'hould try to bru'sh up on when it's nece's's'ary to u'se an apo'strophe with word's s'pelled with an s'.

Did they stop teaching the rule in school?  It's gotten worse and worse over the past 5 years.

well Fin Bender.  They gotta eat and pay bills too. 

Got one hired for June, always have an awesome time with him. Can't wait.

Well, now in addition to the reasons I listed below for not using a fishing guide, you can add two new ones: 1) not observing or obeying the order to limit travel and stay within your community and continuing to traveling across the state to fish. 2) Defying the order to stop non essential business.  

The ethical, responsible, law abiding guides in this state really need to do something to clean up the actions of those who are giving this profession a bad reputation. Report them.

Have has three guide experiences over the years.

1: Won the trip through work, Lake Oahe, guide showed us some things, put some effort into it, caught only a couple of walleyes.  

2: Devils lake ND, 3 days using a guide service, within our group of 16, 4 total guides, noticed a difference among guides, some where all in for their 4, others where not, noticed that ours was just as concerned about not showing others if we were catching fish as giving us every opportunity to catch fish.

3: Sturgeon Bay, Walleye trip, was above average temperatures and no wind, marked plenty of fish, took us to two spots, tried same thing over and over, when we asked to try something different, blew us off, that was the gear he had along, and it worked several days ago.  No fish caught, cut day short, didn't reduce our fee, was annoyed when given reduced tip.  

Great post, Joe Cool!!

Hire guide's with reference's with pass client's contact number's, make sure they're licensed and insured guide's and ask them all your question's and concern's before hiring a guided trip. Do your research on your end before spending your hard earned money, find other's that went and used the guide service before. If winning a guided trip or maybe the place you work at gifted you a guided trip then expect the good/bad experiences unless you decline that gifted guided trip because you personally did your research and didn't like what the guided trip had to offer your personal expectation's. Guide's in their rookie year in business shouldn't always be expected to meet all your personal expectation's as any business or service offered to the public that start's up their own business most time's are in the time frame whether their start up business with be successful or not.

You can hire and pay a Contractor that does a bad job or make's you feel like you been ripped off, you can elect a President that later you feel your vote for them was a bad decision, you can buy a loaf of bread from at a store 60 mile's from your resident's to find out the next day when you want to make a sandwich it has mold on it! Why single out experience's of a few Fishing Guide's or Guided Trip's?  

Do your homework before spending a dime toward's hiring a Fishing Guide or Guided Fishing other than being impressed with word's, picture's and their advertising. It doesn't take a lot of time out one's day to do a little research on a public service business before deciding to hire them. Either way, sometime's no matter all the leg work you do on your end in hiring a public service their will always those service's that don't meet other's and your expectation's, especially when other's and you don't know those individual's that have a public service on a personal/friend/family basis.

I have fished with a number of guides on trips my employer paid for. Unfortunately very few of those experiences were really positive. Generally it was get a quick limit of small fish so we could go in. Two of the trips the guides were totally unprepared and one time we we had to go with a high school kid as the main guide was too busy apparently.

Fin Bender, I know about the group that was holding fish under the ice and have heard a lot of people do the same thing in open water with tanks at their houses. You should see some of the promo photo shoots when fish are passed around.

Someone needs to be very clear with their expectations of a guide before hiring them and I would find it difficult to hire someone without many years experience on a body of water, what gets me is when guides are advertising for a body of water and use photos from when they went to Erie for all their advertising. I was also surprised how few guides I met give anything back to the resource, there are exceptions but they seemed rare when talking with them.

punish the many for the faults of the few doesn't sound very American to me... there's already laws in place for the law breakers... 

every guide I know and hired were the perfect models for ethical harvest or release should that be your gig... and also were very knowledgeable about rules. regulations, tactics and the outdoors in general... fun to fish with and produced life long good memories

it was obvious in ALL cases that they were competent conservationists, teaching how to protect the resource, and I see no reason to smear an entire industry because of a few bad actors 

Disappointing......and no, I never heard of this.  Yet, that isn't the most distressing comment you made, in my opinion.  This part about if it's the fact that guides kill every single fish they catch for advertising photos is most distressing to me.  I've never seen a guide kill any fish for advertising.  Whomever told you this is dead wrong.  If a client wants fish to eat he takes his catch home, as defined in the regulations.  If the fish isn't going with the client we will get a quick photo and release it.  Why would a guide kill a fish for advertising?  It makes zero sense to me.  Capt Jerry.

For those that never learned about this, or perhaps forgot about the 2015 cases of guides keeping fish alive under the ice for later photo shoots it was quite a stir. It was such a big deal that the 2016 WI DNR/CC spring hearings had a question on the subject. I cut and pasted the question here, below, to help jog your memory. Or, you can see it directly on the DNR web site here: https://dnr.wi.gov/About/WCC/Documents/spring_hearing/2016/2016SpringQuestionnaire.pdf 

Apparently all guides are not the ethical, environmental champions as they'd like us to believe.

QUESTIONS 42. Holding fish for personal gain 

Fin Bender,

I do not know who you are referring to, but none of the guides I know do ANY of the things you listed in your comment.  Capt Jerry.

I won't hire one...

I don't know if it's the fact that guides catch limit's of fish and gift them to their clients, or if it's the guide from a few years back that kept large walleyes alive on ropes under the ice just to pull up for photo shoots, or if it's the fact that guides kill every single fish they catch for advertising photos...... or maybe it's all three, it's not for me. In fact I find it rather disgusting.

I have fished with 3 different guides.  The first we asked to show us as much of the river we were fishing before arriving and during our trip.  We fished a 100 yard stretch of what I would consider an easy access, community spot all day.  We caught bass and he really wanted to keep the one walleye we caught.  Not very friendly or informative and indignant when he realized he was not getting a tip as he did not accommodate us at all.  The second was for muskies on Green Bay.  Weather was tough and chased us in twice.  Fished a well know community spot but with weather we were alone with good conditions for the location.  Landed a 43" fish and saw 3 others including a tank.  End of day he didn't charge us full rate as we spent 2 hours waiting it out.  He was compensated appropriately. The third was at LSC.  He was not happy that there were 3 of us and seemed unhappy that one was an inexperienced woman.  He never bothered to demonstrate a proper figure 8, was foul mouthed, complained about other fishermen, made racist comments, and generally was unprofessional.  At 8 hours with one 18" follow we had enough and went in.  So bottom line is be clear about expectations, ask for demonstrations of techniques, talk to people that actually have fished with them, and make it clear their tip will be generous if they deliver what you expect.

Sorry to hear of your ice fishing experience. My open water guided trips were few and far between but like some other posters here, the money seemed to me to be well worth the leap taken in knowing how to catch fish on a given body of water. A perfect example was the walleye guide who taught us how to score on a lake my inlaws had been fishing for decades. We learned to slow down, use fresh bait, move until you find fish, and don't hesitate to try fishing deeper water. Doesn't sound like rocket science, but we caught twice as many fish after seeing the guide in action on a big western Minnesota lake. The other guide was out of Algoma and much the same happened fishing Lake Michigan. We got to see how it's done by the pros and copied it the best we could. Neither of these guys was the cheapest we could find but both were recommended highly by others.