Bernd Ziesche | Wednesday, 2 December 2015
Fly fishing with a proper guide usually means you get a lot of excellent hints helping you to present your fly smoothly and effectively to the fish. Of course it also means you will pay a serious amount of money!
When fly fishing a new area or a new species of fish I usually prefer to hire a proper guide helping me to get a perfect start instead of wasting a lot of my time. I chose my guides by (their) guiding experience as well as (their) fly fishing experience. A guide who didn't fly fish quite often himself never was the one I was interested in. Too many key factors in order to become an excellent guide are much harder to learn, if one doesn't fly fish. Many simple things like putting the client in a perfect casting position not having the wind coming towards the rod hand seem to be difficult for those guides not fishing themthelves.
Once I have decided to fly fish with a guide I always make sure to listen to all details and have several key questions availble for the day. For me it always worked well to ask the guide to catch a fish himself and see how he did it. Great deal to learn in watching the expert doing everything perfect in detail.
Being a teacher for fly fishing myself I really had to learn that putting the client in front of the fish isn't more than 20%. 80% is about getting him/her to the point of being able to catch the fish around! Making sure to help the client to fully understand the key points in detail and to really use them ALL DAY LONG is a main goal for me.
It is interesting how much those clients can learn within just one day who were mentally prepaired to learn as much as possible about HOW to fly fish for whatever species of fish.
Fishing with a guide I sometimes had a bit of a weird feeling about different strategies the guide offered to me in order to help me catching the fish. In the end the guide was always spot-on. I have really learnt to listen and sometimes not to think too much. Especially I stopped questioning all different fishing strategies guides offered to me. Having carefully chosen an excellent guide they all were right!
If you would ask me about what to think of when having a fishing date with your guide - my answer is clear: Always listen to your guide and you'll soon be in the game!
Great fly fishing week to all of you!
All my best
Bernd
Fair to say we had another great week fly fishing for pike. Several serious ones were involved.
Some pictures of last week...