Hey everyone I am looking for some advice on how i can possibly start my fishing career which is my passion.I want to be a guide of coarse on the Mississippi river and want to compete competitively in Walleye and bass mostly but honestly i rather do it all.So any tips or advice would be great thanks a lot and fish on.
My advice would be, go to college and get your degree, find a good paying job. Then you can afford to fish tournament’s and guide on the weekends. Fishing is a very expensive career. Fishing for a living is very different from fishing for fun. When you have to go out on the water day in and day out and put fish in the live well it is not fun anymore. I appreciate your passion, as I moved here to lake mille lacs about 12 years ago with similar thoughts. I have since figured it out, I have a job that allows me to fish and hunt 4 out of every 6 days if I want to, not because I have to. Just to test yourself and see if you have what it takes to be a guide, take a month off and go out every day, 30 days in a row and fish from 7:00am until 4:00pm and see how you do. Just to make it realistic, bring along someone that you may not like very much and see if you can deal with them for 8 to 10 hours straight, in a boat, on a day when the fish are not biting at all. I am not trying to scare you out of something that you want to do, just giving you a few things to think about before you commit to a career that isn’t what you thought it was going to be.
If you have never fished a tourney before I suggest joining a weeknight fishing league. The one I am on is on Tuesday nights mainly south metro. And it’s bass only. We have a 12 boat max. (Not sure if we are full yet)and u can try your luck at a smaller club tourney first I think u will be surprised of the consistent quality of fish people catch. and you will learn a lot.
Matt.
Listen to puddlepounder.
I am not trying to scare you out of something that you want to do, just giving you a few things to think about before you commit to a career that isn’t what you thought it was going to be.
…and throw away this time to get a good education that could pay x10.
I said it in another post. If you’re truly passion about fishing as a career, wrap your studies around journalism related courses.
I am not trying to scare you out of something that you want to do, just giving you a few things to think about before you commit to a career that isn’t what you thought it was going to be.
…and throw away this time to get a good education that could pay x10.
I said it in another post. If you’re truly passion about fishing as a career, wrap your studies around journalism related courses.
Some excellent advice these guys have given you.
Its really hard to make a decent living from fishing alone.
I would strongly recommend having a regular career first. Then work
on the fishing thing on the side and if it goes well enough, then maybe
make a career change.
I just want to add one thing. When I said”it isn’t fun anymore”, I should finish that with, I really enjoy my job and have alot of fun doing it. At times though, it can be very high stress and demanding. That’s when I really appreciate being able to come home and go out on the lake and relax. Fishing for a living can be fun, but it is very different from the fishing you are doing today
Go take some small business classes to help get you started. You can know how to catch fish and all the greatest spots on the river and it will mean very little unless you know how to run your business.
Just to test yourself and see if you have what it takes to be a guide, take a month off and go out every day, 30 days in a row and fish from 7:00am until 4:00pm and see how you do. Just to make it realistic, bring along someone that you may not like very much and see if you can deal with them for 8 to 10 hours straight, in a boat, on a day when the fish are not biting at all.
Very well stated. But Joel made a comment to me a few years ago when I turned my outdoors business into a full time labor of love. This has stuck with me and it is so accurate.
“You can’t just be good at going out and catching big or a lot of fish. You have to be able to get your clients to catch the fish”
That sounds easy, but most don’t realize how hard it is. For some fishermen, it is easy to look at the river, lake, structure, habitat, and elements and just SEE where to start and what changes to make. So many others don’t have that skill set and its probably the most difficult to teach.
I started to type out my annual budget of all my expenses. In hindsight, thought it would be better for you to draft your own business plan and put number to what you think is realistic. If you have anyone that can serve as a business mentor, have them look it over and ask you the hard questions.
This is all awesome advice guys i am going to college in winona for auto and thats a great field to go into right now
That sounds easy, but most don’t realize how hard it is. For some fishermen, it is easy to look at the river, lake, structure, habitat, and elements and just SEE where to start and what changes to make. So many others don’t have that skill set and its probably the most difficult to teach.
Randy how does one get better at this skill. I always listen in and try to pick up what other guys are saying, watch how they are fishing. But knowing how fish will work on structure is something i can not wrap my head around
I understand what Randy is saying. I have fished with a friend from work, I have out fished him from time to time using the same lure or live bait. He has accused me of not telling him everything I was doing and that was not the case. I have even straight up switched rods with him and still out fished him. Something as small as keeping your Lindy sinker off the bottom a foot instead of two feet or twitching a rapala at the right cadence while trolling might make the difference. Explaining that to someone and having them do it right is a different story.
Ideally you would have a family or partner that is very supportive. Having income from somewhere else with flexible hours is very important too. It is a line of work that many would like to do but few get to. It takes a special set of circumstances to be able to pull it off. Working a 50 hour week and guiding nights and weekends really isn’t a sustainable path.
As B.K. said, journalism could really help this be a full time thing for you some day. Marketing, photography, business or teaching are other careers that might pair well with being a professional fisherman.
This is all awesome advice guys i am going to college in winona for auto and thats a great field to go into right now
Stay with it! Do the best you can in school and get the best job you can when you’re done.
Look at it this way. Getting into ANY business will require capital. That means $$$. It has to come from somewhere and it will most likely be from your own earnings. So a good job will be an incredible advantage if you decide later on to do this.
Another idea would be to get yourself a summer job as a guide at a lodge somewhere. That would be great to show you the realities of guiding and see if you really want to do it over the long haul.
Grouse
I think I get exactly where you are coming from. I love to fish, and what better way to make a living that doing something for work that you love doing anyway. I can’t tell you what to do, but I will give you a few things to think about.
A) what do you love about fishing?
For me it involves a few things. 1) Spending time with people I enjoy.
2)It is a pressure free challenge. It gets me away from any stresses, gives me something to challenge myself while not really mattering if I catch fish or not. 3) I get to spend time in a beautiful place.
When I think about guiding, it changes most of those. 1) I may not enjoy the person who I am guiding. 2) It now is my work not my escape from the pressures of work. It still is a challenge, but my business depends on me succeeding a high percentage of the time.
I admire and respect those few who have made it. But for me, it makes sense to keep fishing something I do for me.
I just want to add one thing. When I said”it isn’t fun anymore”, I should finish that with, I really enjoy my job and have alot of fun doing it. At times though, it can be very high stress and demanding. That’s when I really appreciate being able to come home and go out on the lake and relax. Fishing for a living can be fun, but it is very different from the fishing you are doing today
You dont become a fishing guide to catch fish. You need to show others how to catch fish. I did very little fishing on my guide trips. That wasnt what I was there for. It was to get others on fish. Hard to focus on that if your attention is on catching your own fish.
Randy how does one get better at this skill. I always listen in and try to pick up what other guys are saying, watch how they are fishing. But knowing how fish will work on structure is something i can not wrap my head around
Ok, I’ll probably make a few laugh with this. I’m not “normal”. I don’t look at a lake map and see contour lines. I see a 3D view of structure with no water and relate it to trapping and predator hunting. I look for every little subtle difference that most would over look. Most would look at a vast mud flat and see it as a flat land that is structureless. I see it looks just like the parking lot at Walmart right after church service is done and 2 hours before the Packers kick off. I see the bottlenecks that funnel into the lot, the very small medians, the dips in the asphalt, the “flow” of predators coming and going from the groceries…. So yes, I know and accept that I have an unusual way of seeing things.
<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>Lake speed wrote:</div>
I’m not “normal”.
That’s for sure and I know that because I’m the only one that’s normal.
All great advice. Starting out as a guide is not a cheap endeavor. You need to have a lot of gear just to get started, and gear costs money. I got into guiding because I get a bigger kick out of putting people on fish than catching them myself. Sometimes, getting clients bit can be very frustrating, and not every client is someone you will cherish the time with. You see all levels of clients, and very few of them take fishing as seriously as you will. It can be very rewarding though. I would strongly recommend making sure you pave the way for a job that pays you a solid wage first, and put everything else behind that.
LOL. i think that all of you are giving this person some good advice i just cant help at laughing because so far, all of the advice has been of excercising great caution in this endeavor. Personally, i think its all relative to your expectations and perspective. if you are expecting to be successful and make lots of money than maybe consider carefully this venture, if you are ok living in a shack by the river and living on lesser means than it sounds like a great idea and i wouldnt worry too much about “going all in” on this venture. In my opinion there is no such thing as a poor person living in America because i choose to maintain a world perspective and know that there are people who need to worry whether a bomb will land on thier house today or whether or not their child will be able to eat this week. That perspective allows me to realize that poverty is all relative, aka, your success story in guiding is all relative to your expectations and needs. But, as others have said, think about this one cause what the others have said is probably more accurate to your situtation…
Having a spouse with a good job and health insurance coverage for the both of you, is probably the best thing that could ever happen to you if you desire a career as a fishing guide or tournament fishermen. (or both)
Additionally, said spouse will need to be very, very understanding and supportive of you career choice.
(if your married, the 2nd part is will be a necessity either way)
if you are ok living in a shack by the river….
Hey now!
$400.00 per trip.
365 days per year $146,000.00
Summer only fishing? May through November… $72,000.00
No trips booked 7 days per month…. $55,000.00
Weather two days per month….50,200.00
Clint cancels for emergency 1 day per month…47,800.00
Now from the $47k subtract expenses…
Tackle
Bait (I see the live bait you walleye guys take out!)
Boat/Motor/trailer tires repairs
Some money needs to be put away for a new boat
US Coast Guard License
Annual drug testing fee
Boat/business insurance ($400.00 minimum)
This doesn’t account for advertising or the cell phone you would likely have anyway.
Now by joining NPAA (National Professional Anglers Association) $100.00 per year, a guide can save on much of the gear.
Crap, no wonder I feel broke all the time!
What’s left over hardly pays for the shack on the river! 
I read over my post and I sound pretty negative.
I will say in the last 10 years I’ve met, fished with and made more good people they at anytime in my life and I wouldn’t give it up for any money.
My point above is like many have said, a person has to want something more then becoming financially rich from straight guiding (or tourney angling).
Larry Smith might be an exception to this rule. Although he might not be rich, he’s a full time guide and putting his kids through collage. When I say full time…I mean FULL TIME. Twice a day trips on many if not most days.
What’s left over hardly pays for the shack on the river!
On a good day, maybe it pays for a snack on the river. Going into for the money isn’t worth it. Going into it because you have a passion for fishing and don’t care about money, a different story. As any guide will tell you, the hundreds of hot women guide groupies that love the smell of dead fish is endless and a major perk.
Boat/business insurance ($400.00 minimum)
That doesn’t even come close to what I’m paying for my insurance.
I understand you can get by with less but I’m not about to leverage my future for one mishap on the water.
What’s left over hardly pays for the shack on the river!
Brian, you went with what I deleted…and you still have a lot that isn’t listed there. Expenses can kill you fast. I run year round and include ice fishing, predator hunting, animal damage control (ADC) trapping. If it wasn’t for having seminars and other paid promotional engagements, I’d be begging for the fish bucks to be back on here so at least I felt like I was making something.
I have no guiding experience, but I would worry heavily about the startup cost. You need a boat(probably a nice one), rods/reels for every species/technique you plan on guiding for(nice ones too), a constant stream of lures/line/terminal tackle as your clients will lose a lot of all of those(especially if you are fishing the river). You need a truck to pull your boat as well. Safety gear. Not to mention gas everyday.
What will you do in the winter? I know the main channel stays open year round in certain places of the Mississippi, but I can’t imagine you will have a lot of open water business that time of year. So are you going to ice guide then? Okay, then you need at least 2 reliable augers I would think, more nice rods/reels, lures, line, house(s), snowmobile probably, flashers, etc.
I’m sure you have some of that stuff already, but if you booked 2 or 3 clients that wanted to vertical jig for walleye tomorrow, do you have 3 nice vertical jigging rods ready to go?
Let’s say you are able to instantly book every weekend of the year somehow, and you charge $300 a day for the trip. Remove all your expenses and lets say you generously clear $500 a weekend(other guides could say whether this is generous or not). That’s $26k a year, without factoring in startup costs, gear replacement, boat maintenance, etc..That’s if you somehow booked 52 weekends a year for guiding, it’s more likely you’d be able to book fishing opener in May through late October(depending on the year), so lets say 5 months.
4 days a week of guiding for 5 months is about 80 days of guiding*$300 per = $24,000. I will tell you that $24k is not a lot of money to live on if you have student loans, car payment, rent/house payment. Keep in mind that your career has to be factored in as an expense and that looks pretty scary.
I think most tournament fishermen would agree that you can reliably put fishing tournaments in the expense column of your ledger as well, not the revenue portion.
Edit: BK just posted a better breakdown, but I think as a starting guide you’d need to entertain the very real possibility that you aren’t going to book a client 7 days a week. Maybe $300 is a bit low per day on my side too, I don’t know :).
Cheap way to get into it is maybe buy one of these guys guiding businesses. From some of the numbers being tossed up there you might get one pretty cheap. 
and I agree completely with the numbers being put up. Most likely wont make much more than working at Home Depot or Mc Donalds. Good chance you will put in a lot more hours than one of those jobs. Plus side is being on the water.
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