First guide trip!

Taking my first every guide trip and I have heard that a tip is customary at the end of the trip. After a 500 dollar guide fee what is a normal tip?

As long as service is good, I usually tip 100$ when I take a trip. If they take care of you, Take care of them and on your next trip they'll take even better care of you. I use one guide if I have the extra funds, and he turns a 8 hour trip into a 12 hour trip is the weather is acceptable

Thanks for the info!

Zero if you felt he didn't work his butt off. $100 for a DD.

People have the wrong idea when it comes to guides. For some reason they think you should just catch fish after fish with a guide. It doesn't work like that guide have good and bad days just like us. So to tip more because you caught a DD isn't the way it should work. There are alot more to a guide trip then just catching fish. Maybe he taught you a technique or electronics that you didn't know and wouldn't know without him showing you. So don't base your trip off of fish catching if he does you right take care of him. I usually by breakfast,lunch, and $100 dollar tip.

They getting that much for guiding

Looks like I need to get back into the guide game.......

Tipping is the same everywhere/ 10-20% is fine. What kind of fishing are you doing most bass guides are 400 a day and their are a ton at 300-350 a day right now on fork for a full day. Their is one guide that is at 200 for a full day but you get what you pay for.

My personal opinion is: at $500 a day that guide better be putting me on good fish. Period. I used a VERY well known guide last fall on Fork at $400 & was well pleased with the trip. Conditions sucked, few fish,no DD's. Even then it WAS still an enjoyable fun day on the water & tip was $100 & lunch because I learned several things. Only you can make the assessment after your experience. Just seems $500 is starting to get out of my price range & I WOULD have higher expectations at that price point. Once again, that's just my own opinion.

Just to be clear for the OP, DD's are extremely rare. Don't expect one on your guide trip. Guys are acting like these are normal occurrences. Also, make sure you weigh your own fish. If you were good enough to catch it, you ought to be good enough to weigh it.

If he does a good job and works hard, tip $100. And remember, regardless of how hard he works, the fish don't always bite but a tip should still be given. I always pick up lunch & breakfast as well.

Have you ever considered that you have the wrong idea?

I take a lot of guide trips. The $500 is for the techniques he taught me or the nugget I learned with the electronics. That's a given and are the point of the trip itself. It's also a handsome fee which he gets 100% of. Some of the trips we are in my boat but I still pay whatever he's asking with a smile on my face because I still learn what I'm there to learn. I also gladly pay for breakfast and lunch.

I've also been on more guided trips than I care to admit where we were skunked. He doesn't get a lesser fee for the poor results does he? Of course not. Sometimes the fish don't cooperate and that's out of his control. He will still leave with $500 in his hand to take home to his family. Now if we have a great day and the fish are biting and we get to catch a few good ones there's an extra $50 at the end of the day. He didn't do anything different but the stars aligned and we got better results and he gets an extra 10% because I leave with a big smile on my face and some stories to tell.

Years ago on day two of a three day trip to Mexico, I told our guide that he got a $100 bill if I caught a DD which would have been my new PB at the time. My take is.... I can catch small fish here and I go to Mexico for the freaks. His ears perked up and he had me change the color of my XD 10 and we fished very few spots that day. We kept going back to this same spot over and over, in between fishing the other locations on the lake. My buddy and I realized what he was doing..... he knew something. We were catching fish on the other locations but not here yet he kept coming back here. At 3:00 in the afternoon I caught my new PB at 10.3 pounds and I feel certain that we wouldn't have done so without the carrot I waved first thing that morning.

If $500 for a day of fishing is an unfair wage then raise the fee. Don't assume most of us are going to throw down an extra $100 as the norm. To most of us, that's a lot of coin. You say this "isn't the way it should work" and I beg to differ. When I tip $100 something special has happened.... He's kept us longer, we got great results, or for some reason I just thought it was deserved. Never just "because."

+1

+2...I tend to lean towards this opinion. ...one of the guide's goals is to satisfy the customer, or client

Tip depends on the service.

Me too! 20%

The real quality guides are charging $500

$500 plus a $100 dollar tip? Boy, she better be guiding me naked.

I concur...........