Just wondering how folks feel about tipping the guide.I think economy is on most minds.I always do but my fuel bill going 200 mi went up to.&i will. Is it if you gona play you need to pay. I no these guides spend a lot of cash ./----mike

they already get paid to fish and set their own rates. if i'm paying 2 or 3 hundred bucks then I expect to catch fish for the guide to be worth it. only if it is particularly great will I give extra. restaraunts are one thing...fishing guides are another.

To start off, I am not a guide. But I have probably went out w/ about 9 or 10 in the last 30 years. These guys are not getting rich being guides. After you figure in Boat, Truck, gas, insurance plus wear & tear it's not much.

I do tip them and it is based on multiple things as to how much. I would say $50 is the least I have tipped but have tipped as much as $100.

The amount depends on: did I have a good time? Did I learn a lot? Their attitude, their equipment, time spent out on the water, their knowledge, did they have to catch bait? How was the bait?

I usually tip based effort gave by the guide. Some of the better tips I have given haven't been on the best days in terms of numbers. It's nice to catch them when there is a easy pattern. However it's better for your fishing skills to experience how they catch them when its tough. Seems you can always pick up something you can always use on every guide trip you take.

I agree they aren't getting rich by any means. They work long days in all kinds of conditions with all angler skill levels. If a guide has 200 trips a year at $350 a trip thats $70,000 before they pay for any expenses. They have alot of expenses. Maybe they keep $35,000 or $40,000 of that?

Regardless of the economy I would always tip my guide. Go-Cats-Go stated it real well above. The ones I've always fished with work there butts off to keep us on fish. I've been lucky maybe but I've always felt that the guides I've been with went above and beyond expectations.

Let me just start off by saying I am a pretty cheap person...Not a tight wod but I am cheap. I like to have nice things but i will try to find the bargains.

Tipping the guides might be to everyones benefit. From personal experience...I went out with a well known guide from this site. He showed us a good time, put us on fish at multiple spots...we did not catch a ton of fish but nonetheless he found the fish for us. Our 3 party group had already discussed that we would tip $15-20 each for our 4 hour trip. Once i left the marina I may have gotten about 1.5 miles down the road before i received a call from the guide thanking me, telling me that it was not necessary, almost asking me to come back and pick it up...we ended with an offer to come back and fish at discounted rate.

My uncle had a similar experience with a guide...they caught minimal fish on 8 party pontoon...they still tipped and the guide offerred to take them back out anytime they wanted at no cost.

But if the guide is a d!ck...forget about it...he might get short changed.

I want to speak from a guides point. We do not expect tips but they are greatly appreciated. They should not be given just on the catching fish part. There is alot that goes into helping the customer to catch fish but sometimes the abilities are not there. Expectaitions are high and abilities are low makes it very hard to make it happen. I see this alot. Now we as guides, can catch fish in alot of ways but, if the customer cannot set the hook hard enough to hook the fish and keep the fish on you then you have to try and find a fish to catch a customer on a short clock ! Again very hard to do. Why should the guide get the blame for not producing when it is not his fault ? How many bites did the customer get that he did not close the deal on ? We have to figure out what the best chances are for our customers to catch are and if it is a moving bait and all the fish are on bottom, that it is TUFF.Getting back to the tip part. I have had many people that who have taken a trip and what they have learned while on my boat on days we may have not done well, and applied it to their way of fishing and have won up to $5,000 dollars doing what I showd them. Now who tipped who ? No one ever looks at that part of it. In fact, this same thing happened just last week, the money the guy won was not $5,000 but the guy made enough to pay for his trip he took with me.Now as a guide we take it hard if we do not have a good day, I know when I struggle I take it very hard. I beat myself up for it, but in all honesty I cannot make fish bite if they do not want to bite. I am a guide not GOD !! We do not get rich and we put in a lot of time on the water to help, so the trip can be a good one. Catching is a plus but it should not be the whole purpose of taking a trip with a GUIDE. Just part of my 2 cents worth. Have a great day !

If the fishing is off, good guides will offer anything from a free reride to a discounted second trip. If you really want to put the guide under the gun and get him working hard when the fish are off, before he even fires up the motor, PAY HIM. I have heard so many horror stories of guides being stiffed by customers at the end of the trip that I decided I would always pay up front. I always figured a man should never have to be worried about getting paid when he shows up at the job.

What I didn't realize was how guides would look at this. I've never been a trip where the guide didn't get at least a 15% tip. When I take a guide out, it's not about catching fish, it's about education. What I've learned is incredible and the guides earned every bit of it. I've never had a guide that wasn't busting butt, sometimes to the point of irritation, on any of my trips.

Marc, that was well said.

Tipping for a guide is simple. Did the guide offer superior service & teaching beyond just having you catch some fish? Then a tip is the best way of saying 'thank you', even if it's just an extra $20. The guide will appreciate it, and most likely will go out of his way to do even better for you next time.

If the guide just parked the boat on the fish & spent most of his time fishing and not helping you, then maybe a tip isn't in order, eh? Of course, that's the guy you don't want to use next time anyways ...

We always tipped our pheasant guide in the panhandle, however it was a fund raiser for their local Lions Club. So, he wasn't paid anything.

I have always tipped a guide except once. I booked a trip with a guide at a lake that I had fished before(big sam), but wanted some sure fire spots on... Well, two days before the trip I was told that the original guide was not going to be taking me out, but one of his buddies was. Yeah, we caught a few fish, but he didn't guide me at all, other than just driving the boat and fishing himself, he didn't help my wife at all (who I have now taught to catch fish for sure) and didn't pay attention to any input that I had (we were catchin a lot of small fish shallow, and I wanted to stay shallow so my wife would catch more fish, he wanted to sit deep and C-rig for big fish). Needless to say, I wasn't very happy with the whole situation... That is the ONLY time I haven't tipped the guide (which it wasn't even the guide in the first place)...

Thanks Marc. You have said it like it is. Next time I see you let me shake your hand.

I have always tipped my guides, catch fish or not. I do tip according to a few things. Did he put us on fish but we just did not catch them? Did he roam around the lake looking like me the first time on the lake? Did he expain what type of fish we were fishing for, how to fish for that species and help you during the course of the time out there. Oh yeah....and how many stories I heard that I can tell my buddies when we fish. I just feel that a guide provides service just like a waitperson, a cab driver....and so on. I usually just see how the day plays out and make that decision on the way back to the marina.

I always tip, fish or no fish. 10-20% depending on how the day went.