Phil on Traveling with a Group
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Our friend and board member Phil Monahan recently posted this article on Midcurrent:
http://midcurrent.com/flyfishing/group_trip.aspx
I’ll reproduce it here for convenience:
Question: Some buddies and I are planning a week-long trip to Montana and Yellowstone next August, flying in and out of Bozeman. There are six of us. Any tips on traveling with a group on a fly-fishing trip?
Peter M., Chicago, IL
Answer: Traveling as a group can be a blast, but there are many pitfalls. Any time your ability to have fun depends on other people doing the right thing, the potential for frustration (or worse) is there. One important variable is how closely knit the group is. Are these all close friends or just guys from your club whom you see once a month? Don’t leave yourself open to unwanted surprises once you’re on the ground in Big Sky Country. In the middle of a trip is not the time to find out that Bob, who always seemed like a decent fellow, is a real whiner or snores like a grizzly or becomes an angry drunk after two beers. So make sure you know as much as possible about your traveling companions before you get on that plane.
Group Trips
photo by SpojeniHaving seen such groups of traveling anglers from both ends—as a member of a group and as a guide catering to them—I do have some advice, which can be broken into two categories: logistics and group management.
Let’s start with logistics:
1. Plan and agree on an itinerary as early as possible. It’s much easier to get folks to agree when you’ve all got plenty of time to make decisions. When you’re burning fishing hours because the group can’t decide to go to the Madison or the Lamar, no one wins.
2. Before you leave, establish who is rooming with whom and, if you’re fishing with guides, who’s fishing with whom. Maybe you’ll want a rotating schedule, which is also fine. Again, it’s just another way to avoid potential conflicts. As a guide, I often heard grousing from group members who “got stuck” rooming or fishing with so-and-so. Head this kind of thing off at the pass.
3. Make sure that everyone packs as light as possible. Sure, you’ll want to be prepared for all weather and conditions, but you’re on a fishing trip—it’s okay to wear clothes (yes, even underwear) two days in a row. Moving 6 guys and their gear from place to place is a hassle, but you can make it easier by packing light.
4. Go out and buy some fluorescent tape, and wrap some around the handle of every bag that belongs to someone in your group. That way, when you’re at the baggage carousel it’s not every man for himself. Two of you can stand back and watch the gear, letting two grab the stuff off the carousel, while two go get the rental cars. Plus, for the rest of the trip, you won’t accidentally leave a bag behind anywhere because the fluorescent tape will stand out.Group management:
1. Establish one guy as the banker, and have everyone throw $100 in the pot. This is for stuff that everyone pays for equally, such as gas, park entry fees, water, etc. It’s a pain in the butt to have to collect from six guys every time you want to buy something you’ll all use. Any money left over at the end of the trip gets divided equally. Similarly, if you run out, everyone can throw in another $50.
2. To avoid conflicts, let everyone pay for his own meals and booze. That way, Mr. Surf-and-Turf isn’t subsidized by Mr. Caesar Salad.
3. If you’re fishing with guides, agree on a tipping policy that you’ll all follow, so no one ends up looking like a cheapskate by mistake.
4. Establish codes of behavior, especially about drinking. I know, this sounds like a rule for children, but you’d be surprised how many times I’ve stood next to the van with pissed-off anglers while we waited for their still-hammered buddy to get his crap together and stumble out to the parking lot. If you went to bed at 10 and got up at 6, you don’t want to have to wait for someone who stayed up until 2 a.m. doing shots and then slept through the alarm. You also do not want to sit in a car with this person for any length of time, either; trust me. (I knew one group that lost a whole day of fishing because one member rolled their rental car during a drunken, late-night joyride. Oops.)Traveling and fishing in a group can be a real blast, full of camaraderie, storytelling, and shared experience. You can ensure that all goes well by planning ahead as much as possible. Good luck!
Great advice; I had a few things to add and I’d like to hear from y’all too.
I’ve been on some doozy trips. I’m often thrown in with a party of other writers, many of whom have, shall we say, a different agenda than my own. Including some things that I can’t really talk about here. But a few events stand out in my mind as real teaching moments, like the time all my bags went to Recife, Brazil while I went to Belem, on the other side of the country.
Or the time that I showed up with the party at 8AM at the dock on what was supposed to be a full day of Bahamas bonefishing, only to have three of the four new guides fail to show and the one who did show fail to have a boat. We didn’t get going until after noon.
Or the times I’ve been paired with non-fly anglers, or worse, beginning fly anglers (who are still supposed to be writers).
I’ve learned from all this that you have to roll with the punches, because you DO NOT want to be “that guy.”
“That guy” is a bitch. That’s all there is to it; he whines about the stuff no one can control; oftentimes he gets drunk or acts inappropriately in an environment where you need your wits about you (anywhere outside the United States especially). He’s late; he doesn’t have his stuff together. By the middle of the trip no one wants to be around him.
The best advice I can give to avoid being “that guy” is just to use common sense. Set alarms 10 minutes early. Label your stuff and keep it organized so you can find it. Be in bed by midnight. If you’re going to get hammered, do it early so you will sleep instead of pass out. Don’t break the law (you wouldn’t think this is necessary, but…) Block-print your name on your bags, because EVERYONE seems to have a Patagonia Great Divider and a Simms Dry Creek Duffel on a fishing trip. Carry insurance so you won’t lose your mind if something gets broken.
Plan to roll with the punches; travel is unpredictable, but you can *plan* for unpredictability. Assume all bags not in your possession will be lost for a while before you go; put toiletries and underwear in your carry on. If yours is the kind of spouse who constantly needs to check on you, establish a check-in time and turn the damn phone off on the water. I have seen a guy’s whole trip ruined by a worried spouse.
Above all else, make sure everyone has the same goals. If it’s a fishing trip, tell everyone up front what is going to happen. “There will be hiking. There will be bugs. You will not get a shower every night.” If it’s NOT a fishing trip, you may need to be the one to back off. This is a hard one for me especially to follow. And if you can’t agree on which one is which, you might be better off splitting up your party, because you don’t want to be halfway up Slough Creek arguing over whether or not this is a leisurely vacation or a serious expedition. Trust me.
Zach
Question: Some buddies and I are planning a week-long trip to Montana and Yellowstone next August, flying in and out of Bozeman. There are six of us. Any tips on traveling with a group on a fly-fishing trip?
Six cars, six hotel rooms!
At least this is my answer after getting back from a 10-man skiing and fishing trip last weekend.
Great article and good timing!
I’ve done quite a few of these. One thing that was only touched on but very important with groups of 4-6 is rotating the guides as there’s always one guide who shines brighter than the rest. Always! Make sure to agree before you leave to rotate. This way no-one gets stuck “mudding” bones for days with the inevitable ‘part-time-usually a cook but this week he’s a guide, one eye on 4pm (quitting time)- type boat captain’, while your friends spend the entire week conquering the flats with ‘Mario’ the permit slaying pole master!
Trust me!
db
BTW- In the image below, who can guess which guide is the ‘cook’, and which is the ‘permit slaying pole master’? Anyone…..?
I just don’t do it, except on a really rare occasion. Any number more than 3 and you are looking at problems. However, I agree that expectations are key when you do. Phil is dead on. Everyone needs to be on the same page with money, fishing locations, and schedule, before you go.
I have a couple of really close fishing buddies who I like to travel with, because we know each other really well and we can just fall into trip mode. That being said, I fished last summer with four other guys, and I only knew one of them before the trip. It was great, but they are a unique group of guys.
Doug, the guy on the left is the cook.
Question: Some buddies and I are planning a week-long trip to Montana and Yellowstone next August, flying in and out of Bozeman. There are six of us. Any tips on traveling with a group on a fly-fishing trip?
Six cars, six hotel rooms!
At least this is my answer after getting back from a 10-man skiing and fishing trip last weekend.
How was the fishing?
If I were you I would look for a reasonably priced lodge, that way you don’t have to spend all of your time debating over decisions between a big group.
I was just responding to the initial question, but, the trip wasn’t so bad, just hard to coordinate a lot of people. I agree that you have to have a bunch of options open for the different guys on the trip.
Don’t be afraid to say “I’ll be here at 8am, if you’re not, I’ll see you at happy hour”.
Good article Zach.
“Plan to roll with the punches; travel is unpredictable, but you can *plan* for unpredictability.”
This is probably the best bit of advice in the whole article.
Finally, being straightforward about how much you want to spend on the trip is also helpful.
I think this is very important. It might seem obvious, because you should know if you can afford the trip or not. But a lot of times it’s about the different activities that pop up or their taste in restaurants. I used to run with some engineers and architects and it was hard to keep up. I quit going when it became obvious that they were adjusting their trips to fit me financially. Great guys, but I was holding them back.
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