Its spring again and just like all the new pretty flowers theres a ton of new guides with pretty new boats but guides are like restaurants some are great and others you wonder how they stay in business. So here is a few tips to help you keep from getting stuck with cpt lame.

Facebook page is a must. No facebook page is a big red flag. Fisherman love fo brag and show off thier most recent catches. This also lets you know if your guide has a good track record of putting people on the fish day in and day out.

Avoid the jack of all trade guides such as bay deep sea and flounder gigging.
Its impossible to stay on top of the latest schools of redfish and trout all day long then stay up all night and keep on top of where the flounder have been poping up at. so do make sure you pick a guide that only targets the fish you want and not the whole ocean.

Some guides have time limits. Got to love these pay check Captains I see this often in the flounder gigging guides 4 hours 1 or 5 fish they are coming in and rarely with a limit. A good guide will grind it out on the slow times.

Ask lots of questions
Some dont allow smoking, alchol, or kids under 12.

Some wont clean your catch. I once seen a guide take the 2 fish the clients caught for the day and put them in a plastic walmart bag and hand them off to the clients.

Down here in Port Aransas there is boats where 1 person flounder giggs at a time and others where 4 people gig at time. some guides will drop you off with a light and expect you to wade and gig for the same price as gigging on a boat.

My advise call and ask questions dont start at the top of the list and book with the first one that has a opening.

Cpt James Parbst
http://nocturnalassault.com

Best guides I know don't use facebook -- they simply don't need extra cheap publicity, they are already booked months ahead.

Good guide is the one who knows what he is doing. Best way to find one is by word of mouth.

I would like to throw this out there. What makes a great guide is his/her ability to teach others, it's in the title "guide". If we are taking peoples money for a service, our job is not to go out and catch there limit and haul them back to the dock as fast as we can. It is to instruct them on how to get that bite and teach them to become better fisherman. I get a laugh out of half day, full day prices from guides. in most cases half day means hurry up, cause i have a party coming to the dock. the guide should always be the last one wanting to go in, and at 1pm when the fishing slows, he should be re-motivating his clients to hit up a few more spot. I do believe word of mouth is the strongest thing in our business. cause if you don't have repeat clients, you have nothing.

^^^^^agreed^^^^^

I try to teach my new customers about half days. What they don't understand is that a lot of the guys doing half days there is no staying longer. When it is time to go that is it even if you just found the fish. Even though I say the usual trip is 6-8hrs, sometimes it is longer just depending on how we have done through the day or if we just found them. I hate putting a time frame on the trip. I always say fish sometimes don't respect our time frames. My cost for a four hour trip and a 10 hour trip are pretty much the same. I try to keep my rates as low as I can get away with for a full day. I really don't have a lot of wiggle room to charge less for a half day. Now I have customers that always want to come in around noon during the summer but they also know that my rates do not change by coming in early.

I hear you. I offer a day of fishing, one price. that way the customer always tells me when he needs to go in. but my point of this matter is teaching, regardless of the time frame. if you teach clients will talk, and your repeat business forms. these pay check guides will not hinder our business. what will happen is they will run out of clients because of the bad word of mouth, and they will call our phones next time. I am not trying to sound cocky, but I have heard it from to many customers in the past. The low balling price is another red flag. Your price reflects your confidence. Yes, we all offer discounts certain times of the year when things slow down, but $100 off compared to $300 off should tell you something. To all the old school guides out there, most newbies won't last long.

I need a like button. Thank you for the honest discussion and being able to talk to people with opposing views like an adult should be able to. Refreshing.

I also like the help when selecting guides. We had duds last two trips. Not bad guys, still a good time, but a higher level of quality is available at a similar price.

I have found with this business it is more about the personalities involved than the amount of fish you catch. People fish with certain guides because they tend to personally like them. The same thing goes for the guide to the customer. You can try as hard as you possibly can but everything just seems to click better when the guide genuinely likes the customers. After a few trips the relationship turns more to a friendship rather than a business/customer relationship.

When I was younger it was all about putting as many fish in the box as I could as quickly as I could. Now I am transitioning to hunting reds with lures out of the boat and teaching my customers. They love site casting and I love the teaching part. Now doing this the success rate necessarily suffers at first because there is a certain amount of skill needed to do this. My customers understand that you don't hook up on every shot and can see that there are fish. I still have customers that just want to anchor and throw bait and I am happy to accommodate them. It is the nature of the business especially when smaller children are evolved (kids crack me up).

There are a ton of guides out there and most of them do things a little different (some a lot). I think that is why business/customer relationship is different than in most every other situation.

You hit the nail right on the head, Anderson. The guides I tend to go back to are not necessarily the best fisherman, but the ones I have the most fun fishing with. I also put some stock in the guides' passion for fishing because I've fished with some guides who were nice people, but I could tell they were burned out. You can usually tell the guides who still enjoy fishing because those are the ones that'll continue to fish, catch & release after a limit is caught. I've fished with guides in the past, caught a limit, and we were off the water in two hours. That's great in all, but I'm not so much after the meat haul, it's nice to have some time on the water.