brian dunigan
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If you care to drive as far as Chattanooga, the Chickamauga tailwater should get a good run of white bass in the spring.
Excellent video on a topic that too often goes “under the radar.”
I hate to get all introspective, but what does this say about our society?
Well, the Smokies are a big place, buddy.
No doubt – and it’s a big place that I don’t know diddly about.
All of the tips so far, whether from the “guides” or the “guided,” have been tips for customers. How about a few tips for the guides? I’ve been lucky to go on a lot of guided trips over the years. Most have been really great – but unfortunately, some have been bad. Here’s some suggestions I’d like to pass along to the pros, from the customer, based on those rare negative experiences:
1. SHOW UP ON TIME!!! It chaps my behind if I agree with the guide that we’ll meet at the ramp at 7:30, and I get up early to be there by 7:15 (just to be sure), and the guide doesn’t come rolling in until around 8:00. I understand that things happen, but it’s like any other job – there’d better be a good reason for being late. And if the guide is late, then I expect that we’ll make it up on the end of the day – I feel a bit cheated when I pay for a full day but we start 30 minutes late and go in 20 minutes early.
2. Along the same line, maybe I’m off base on this, but if I pay for an 8 hour day, I don’t think an hour of breakfast should count. I don’t mind meeting at the diner to start the day, and I’ll even gladly buy the guide’s breakfast. But if we meet at 8:00, don’t hit the water until 9:00, and the boat is back on the trailer at 4:00 sharp, I don’t consider that 8 hours of fishing. In particular, it seems like bass guides in Florida spend a lot of “fishing” time at the restaurant.
3. Have a good time. If you’re not having a good time, pretend you are. For god’s sake, you’re getting paid to take people fishing. I fished with a tarpon guide once out of Miami who had a chip on his shoulder the whole night. He actually mumbled a few curses under his breath when I hooked a good fish just as he was ready to go in for the night – he didn’t think I heard, but I did. Part of being a guide is having patience – even if you decide you don’t like the client who has hired you.
4. Have respect for the wildlife. This is a big one to me, and I think it’s probably one that even good guides occasionally don’t think about. I’ve been on two trips where the guide intentionally swerved to hit animals on the road during the drive to the river. Once it was a prairie dog; once it was a snake. I’m sure the guides thought they were just killing off a “trash” animal, but I didn’t appreciate it. I didn’t say anything, but that kind of thing doesn’t fit into my ethic for how I regard the outdoors, and it was a negative blemish on the day. Also, on Florida bass trips, when I’ve caught pickerel, the guide has often snapped off the pickerel’s jaws and thrown it back to die a slow death. Seems awfully wasteful and needless to me.
In the past, I used a 12 foot sinking leader for streamer fishing for trout and skipjack back before I bought a “real” sink tip line.
the San Juan Worm hatch usuallly follows the Wooly Bugger hatch
The wooly bugger hatch is the worst.
Actually, there are worms that thrive in Ozark waters called the Oligochaete worm… no kidding.
“Oligochaete” is a broad descriptive term that covers a very broad category of worms, including common earthworms.
(no different than the golf tournaments the PGA has its tournaments on)
The PGA doesn’t feed the holes to make them bigger.
We saw 42 bears that we would consider “close enough” and four that fall into the “too close” catagory. Bear spray was never deployed although the finger was on the trigger a few times.
Holy cow.
