Guide Daze

[Driftless]

Ex-Fishing Guide Daze

 

I quit guiding nine years ago. I did it for five years and met quite a few characters and curmudgeons during those guiding dazes.  Come take a journey with me through the years.


Typically I would ask clients prior to taking them out their skill level. Most under reported their casting prowess but quite a few exaggerated. I would also ask them their personal best brook and brown trout. I also got a handle on what their best numbers day was. My goal was to put them on more trout and bigger trout than they had ever caught.


I would say 70 percent of the time they caught more than had ever caught and 60 percent of the time they would leave with their personal best as far as size.  The best brown trout during the time period was twenty seven inches.  The longest brook trout was sixteen and three quarters.   I am particularly proud of my three tiger trout morning in 2005 on a tiny secluded stream in Crawford County.  


I have a fond memory of a father son tandem. It was the son's first exposure to trout fishing. It was a golden trip. This new to trout fishing beginner was hooked for life on trout fishing. His dad was as proud as a peacock of his son. He told me that his son was hooked for life and profusely thanked me for the outstanding outing.


The father and son team are still chasing trout to this day together. They have expanded their horizons and fish in other places. At least once a year I get a post card from some exotic location. Their streams are in Germany and Italy and as far away as New Zealand, The post card has a trout or a stream on the front. The only thing on the message part of the post card each time was two words. Thank you


I one time had a guy catch his personal best brook and brown but he told me at the end of the outing that he was disappointed and was not tipping me and would give me a bad review if I didn't give him another FREE outing because He had not caught a giant. He told me my page was false advertising because he had not caught a 23 inch plus brown. A long story short...I never took him again and no tip.


I had a well known angler once refuse to ride in my vehicle because I had the wrong presidential candidate bumper sticker.  My vehicles through those years had many muddy boots and wet waders in them.

 

 

 I ran into a couple on vacation once that had matching Wisconsin Badger sweatshirts on.  We talked because of our Wisconsin roots.  Come to find I had given a presentation at their son’s school and he now wanted to be a fishing guide as a profession when he grew up.  The odds of running into this couple in Florida were astronomical.

 

Once I had a guy contact me. He told me he had a disabled son and he wanted some easy places to take him. Me being gullible I gave him a couple good places. I later found out this guy was a guide and he lied to me and was looking for easy places to take clients.

I once donated a trip to a VFW for an injured Gulf War veteran.  I ended up taking that vet and his father fishing.  The son was severely handicapped and took many accommodations to make it back out on the water.  The smile on his face when he caught a decent trout will forever be etched in my memory.

 

 

I presented at a couple nursing homes also.  The audience was much smaller typically but very rewarding.  Many of the residents were died in the wool outdoors people and had not been able to be “out there” for decades and the photos and my tales took them back to their younger years.


I sat in on a couple auctions of trips I donated to cancer research and other charities.  I even presented to one of these charities to get the bidding started.  It gave me a great feeling of self satisfaction to see my guided trip bring $8,000 dollars for cancer research.  Other donations had totaled $5,000 dollars at other events prior.  Anglers have huge hearts and it was quite obvious at these events and it made me feel very proud to be a part of making money to fight cancer.

 

 

I believed in showing clients a good time. I was new to guiding and really humped to turn clients on to good fish and numbers. My success made the long time established guides in the area look lazy and inept. I had 2 of them say I was padding my numbers and lengths of trout.

One time a client liked the stretch so well that we fished he went back the next day and tried to buy the land from the owner. I knew the owner well and he was thinking about selling but the guy wanted to post the land and especially not let me back on there. The land owner declined to sell.

Once a fly shop owner told me I was going to do a FREE presentation at his shop. He didn't ask. He told me I would do it or he was going to spread lies about me and ruin my guide reputation. I didn't do the presentation.

Karma has a way of repaying back deceitful folks. The shop owner lost his shop shortly thereafter and went to work for a large fishing chain store and later fell off the edge of the trout world.

I was befriended by a long time guide from the area when I first started guiding.  We fished a couple of my better areas with the promise from him he would never take clients back to my favorite spots.  Two days later I found him there with three car loads of people.  I rolled up on him just exiting his vehicle.  I asked him what was up?  He explained to me he was keeping his promise.  The four other anglers with him were not clients but “guides” from other states.


I had a client that would only use crawlers and he didn't ever keep any trout but refused to go barbless and to set the hook on the first bite. He typically waited for the second or third nibble. The trout were very hard to get the hook out and I felt bad for them.


One season I was hired to be a long time retired Green Bay Packer's exclusive guide for the year trout fishing. He matched my year prior's total. He only went out with me 10 times that year. I got to wear his Super Bowl One and Two rings at the same time.  He told the same story almost every time we went out.  It was about the iconic quarterback sneak in the Ice Bowl.  I got the in the huddle story prior to the frigid play that only the center and quarterback knew of the last second.

My packer friend introduced me to a legend of the college basketball coaching world.  This man was quite a gentleman and a character.  He will forever be known for his throwing of a chair onto the court during a game.  He told me about his mindset before and after the incident.


During my 5 years of guiding I donated over 40 guided outings to charity and non-profits. One of my donated guided trips was with a couple school teachers and they were new to trout angling.  They had a wonderful outing.  Trout fishing is a male dominated pursuit but I would put this female principal and science teacher up against any male anglers.

I presented at over 50 schools through the years for free.  It was very fulfilling watching the children’s faces.  I mixed in spiders and snapping turtles into my photo show.  Along with the creepy crawlers and snakes I mixed in flowers and breathtaking scenery photos.  My only mission I had at each school presentation was to plant the seed and leave that school knowing I had turned those kids on to the wonders of the outdoors. 

I once had a contract from Field and Stream to do a 12 photo layout and feature story for them on a famous angler/hunter I took out regularly. I told the guy a couple weeks prior to our outing and he oked it.


He showed up on the day of the trip at 10:45am and we fished for an hour and he then went turkey hunting. He didn't like any of the photos and refused to let me use them. The story and photos were to get me a $2,000 pay day and notoriety.  I took the guy for FREE each time to say I guided him and to use photos in articles.

 
I also had him ask me when I was going to pay him for fishing with me. He typically got 80,000 dollars an hour for speaking. The same guy let out seven different swear words in one sentence when I failed to clear his back cast for him and he caught a tree.


He also had an aversion to losing flies. He would go under water and crawl out in tree limbs to retrieve flies. This angler grew to be too high maintenance for me and I handed him off to a friend to entertain.

 

During the guide daze I learned how secretive trout anglers are. I swear they would give you their first born child before they would give you information on a stream.  A Midwest Flyfishing Magazine article I had written even caused an angler to knock on my front door to talk to me to voice his frustration with me publicizing “his” streams. 


I had a featured article in American Angler magazine. The editor told me that good articles typically received at least 6-7 angry emails from anglers because of giving too much attention to "their" fishing area. The editor contacted me later and said I got 13 hate emails.


I once had a client do so well he didn't have enough money with him to tip me adequately and he was a former employee of Gerber Knife company and he gave me eight high end knives he had new in their boxes as a tip.

 

 

I once had three rich guys fish with me all at once. They were talking about buying a medical supply company. The company was on the market for 750,000 dollars. They split the price in threes. Four years later they fished with me again and bragged they had just sold the company for 23 million.


The majority of anglers I guided were excellent anglers and stand up good citizens. They were mostly from the Midwest.  A couple came from other places in the states and as far away as Germany and Italy.  The regulations in other countries are baffling I learned from my foreign clients.  No one ever got skunked when they went with me.


I have had my glasses and cap ripped off by clients numerous times by clients in a hurry. I have been hooked in the hand, arm, ear, face and head. When you guide you must watch and not fish yourself.  It felt like going to a gold mine without a shovel.

 

 

In the last four years I have had four knee surgeries and one back fusion.  I still get out on the water as often as my body allows.  It is a chapter of my life I would not have omitted from my journey.  Guiding was fulfilling but it took its toll on my body and my soul.  I love the outdoors and would not have missed a second of wading and talking and learning on the streams of rural Wisconsin.

 

 

Len Harris trout fishing guide 2003-2008.

Edited July 21, 2017 by LHarris

[Cheers]

Thank You for the very interesting and enjoyable morning read

[Hoey]

Len - This was a very nice article.  I enjoyed your writing style.  Take care.

[Sturg]

Great storytelling with pictures on a portion of your life experiences in the  great outdoors.  Thanks for sharing Len.