It ain’t easy being a fishing guide.
Romanticized by those who don’t understand, the job of a guide is anything but dreamy. Waking at ridiculous hours, fishing guides spend the day working their butts off, all the while trying to ensure clients stay happy and enjoy their day off.
Quality guides constantly consider the investment of their anglers. In short, an agreement is formed that the effort will match the gain, in terms of fish catches and entertainment.
Sometimes there’s a breach of contract. We’ve all heard the stories of the lazy fishing guide who watches the hours tick by as his clients bomb. I’ve actually been on the receiving end of that. It’s useless to fight it. Those guides won’t be in business long, anyway.
More often, though, it’s the client that loses sight of the goal and cheats on the relationship. No, the customer isn’t always right. Not when you’re a fishing guide. Consider a scenario.
After producing a quality day for a couple regular clients, the guide was surprised to see those same customers – this time in their own boat – return to the fishing grounds a few days later. The scenario would repeat itself. Time after time, while trying to perform for his current customers, the guide would be hampered by the former patrons now working over his best holes.
Enough was enough. The guide sent a pointed text message to the spot-stealers who quickly responded. “We paid you to learn new techniques as well as new areas.” The package included a marked map of good fishing spots that they could use whenever they wanted, right?
The client assumes no harm comes from revisiting a guide spot. A great deal of this comes from missing the big picture.
Next Monday, that client will be back at work, living the other part of life. The guide will be back on the water, dealing with the same scenario but a different group. Again and again.
His phone chimes at 5:45. A handful of messages come in inquiring about the fishing, looking for handouts. Another former client is on vacation and rented a boat; wants to come out and catch a few. There’s Bill and Jerry, the guys from last week, over there on the point. Bill’s son and his buddy, the kid with the new boat, are on that same break line where the kid caught his first bass. Geez, it seems like just a few years ago. Looks like they’ve got a third boat with them this year, too.
They’ll just be in town for a few days. But next week’s The 4th, and it’s always crowded. This year, the guys from Wisconsin are bringing their bass club down for a tournament. The guide remembers their first smallmouths, too, just like the kids’. At the time, they’d never even heard of a dropshot. Now, they have forward-facing sonar.
The guide considers his end game. This just can’t last. Maybe, down the road, he’ll consider a new body of water. A new group of “regulars.”
Now Monday’s over, and the former client is on his way home. He notices the breeze when he comes out of his office, and immediately thinks how rough it must be on the big water, somewhat glad he’s not out there dealing with it. For a minute, he thinks of the guide and the text and the principle of the whole thing. The right and wrong.
He’s still convinced he’s right. The trip did, in fact, include the knowledge base of productive fishing areas. It’s a big lake. Besides, the guide has his whole summer to look for more areas.
The guide mulls over his situation, all the best spots now taken by the new experts he once taught to fish. If only there was more time. But today would be a bad day to go look around, anyway. The clients in the boat just can’t get the feel of things and four fish really isn’t worth a full rate. A long run to the ace-in-the-hole was greeted by bass boats equipped with mapping chips and SpotLocks. Looks like this group’s ready to call it quits and cut their losses.
A famous tarpon guide referred to it as “intellectual property.” The knowledge that comes with spending a lifetime on the water. Accordingly, fishing spots were his intellectual property and those who came in on him were, as he explained, stealing.
But were they? If I made it difficult for you to earn a living because I impeded your business, am I stealing from you?
You provide goods to a list of customers, and you recently found that your business was being undercut by me, the competitor. I’m unlicensed, don’t have any operating costs, and sell products out of the trunk of my car, invisible to the tax man. On and on it goes. Each time you check in with a client, you find that some back-door operator took your business. How long, do you suppose, you could last?
Perhaps it’s not a big deal. I mean, it’s a big country. There’s lots of business out there, right?
Besides, I was once a client. All I’m doing is utilizing the information you provided to go further with my own game. That was part of the deal all along, wasn’t it?
Almost like a marked map.
Intellectual property? Come on. This is fishing.
Intellectuals have nothing to do with it.
(Joe Balog is the often-outspoken owner of Millennium Promotions, Inc., an agency operating in the fishing and hunting industries. A former Bassmaster Open and EverStart Championship winner, he's best known for his big-water innovations and hardcore fishing style. He's a popular seminar speaker, product designer and author, and is considered one of the most influential smallmouth fishermen of modern times.)
