Guide Thoughts

Their One Day

I have been blessed, in my 25-plus years of guiding, to come up under and work with some of the best fly-fishing guides in California. I started guiding when I was 18 years old. Unfortunately, like most teenagers, I didn’t listen much to my parents at that age. There is a window in a young man’s life where the last person they want to be like is their parents. And so I had fly fishing and fishing guides as my teachers.

One of the first lessons I learned from one of these mentors happened a few years into my guiding career. This was right about when the romance of being a fishing guide was wearing off, and the reality of the day-to-day grind of fishing guide work was setting in.

I was on a group trip with my mentor and a few other guides on the Lower Sacramento River, and I was late. Now, my mentor was always late — which was fine, as the boss is allowed to be late. When you are later than the usually late boss, though, you are in trouble.

I pulled into the Posse Grounds and rushed around to dump my boat, tie it off, and drive my truck and trailer to the top of the ramp to connect with the group.

After I pulled back up, my boss took me aside and looked at me very kindly. Keep in mind that I was deathly afraid of disappointing this man—I still am at 45 years old—but also deathly afraid of what he would do to me if I ever did. He asked me why I was late. I explained that this was my sixteenth day in a row guiding and that I had been a bit under the weather and overslept. He looked at me, paused, and asked, “If our clients are tired or worked all week, do we expect them to show up on time?”

“Yes,” I said, of course.

Then he looked at me, and he said something I will never forget. He said, “This may be your sixteenth day; it may even be the five thousandth time you have done this float. But do you know what it is for our clients? It is their ONE DAY.”

This is the day, he explained, that they had put on the calendar, saved for, planned out, and traveled here for. “To come fish with you, me, and the other guides,” he said. “Until you understand that, you will just be someone who takes people fishing, not a guide.” And then he walked away.

At the time, I honestly thought I was going to cry. And then get beat up, as fishing guides don’t cry. (Isn’t there an old The Cure poster somewhere that says this?). I knew I had disappointed my mentor, and it hurt — I would have much preferred that he call me names, dock my pay, and maybe threaten to beat the snot out of me if I did it again rather than leave me with the thoughts he did.

In the end, it was one of the most important lessons I learned as a guide, and I would eventually need to learn it as a husband, a father, and a human. A good husband, father, and guide must put themselves in the shoes of the other person and cannot always put themselves first.

A good guide puts aside their issues or selfish concerns and compromises to work for the client’s benefit and make their day the best day possible. Some clients want to catch a ton of fish, so I will be on them to fish with precision and effectiveness. Others need a stress-free day under the sun and to appreciate a long lunch in the shade with a great view of the river. Again, it is not my day, and the results are not mine to measure.

We can all learn a bit about empathy and service from the idea that it is their ONE DAY, I think. Fly fishing is a great teacher. It teaches us about life via a river, with a rod in our hand—and that is usually a much easier-to-swallow lesson than reality provides.

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