Whenever I go fishing somewhere completely new, I like to hire a guide, yes it’s water, yes there’s fish in the lake, and yes, maybe I’ll catch a fish, but sometimes, when the guide says, I’ve been in the business 35 years that my dad started, and our family just stayed with it, I kinda mentally drool.
That’s a lot of experience, and if I get in a guide’s boat, and he has no electronics, I know instantly, he knows what he’s doing. They motor out into the lake, who knows what landmarks he has in head, the boat speed, run time, it’s peat and repeat to a good guide.
Water temp, dips his finger in, yeah I’ll go there, depths he has his holes in his mind, baits, lures, I like the jig, and a minnow contact with the bottom, sort of angling, it’s simple, time honored and proven, like the guide your fortunate enough to accompany for a morning or a day.
It seems eons ago now, but a favorite guide of mine, he never even wore a jacket, a long sleeve shirt, he must have stood six-foot-six, a rather quiet guy, he did more pointing instruction, than talking lessons. And the first night back at the lodge, he comes and finds me, me, the place had loads of older adults, and he seeks me out, and off to the kitchen we went.
The first thing he made that night was wild rice popcorn, before it could cool he grated some cheese over it, oh my goodness, then he made regular wild rice, he said tomorrow morning very early, this rice will be in your breakfast. Early was no joke, the scrambled eggs with the wild rice and everything else about was most certainly in my breakfast, then he took me fishing.
It was one walleye after another, an occasional northern pike, but mainly eye after eye, and just chatting during the day I asked him why he became a fishing guide; he looked over the lake, set the hook on yet another walleye and says reeling it in, “Wow, I don’t know what else I’d ever do.”
--The trout whisperer
