Although i never considered something like that before, i am thinking of starting a small fishing related business. As there is a lot of people here, who travel and use guides etc. i have decided i shall ask a few questions here.

I would not guide in well known waters or for "wild"fish. There is plenty of guides overe here, who can do that. I like fishing for true wild fish, for which you must work hard and deserve it. Climbing over rocks, stalking, hidding your signature etc. No warranty on catching loads of fish or huge fish. Unfortunately, we are loosing waters which are still capable of delivering that each year due to fishing turism and stocking.

Another thing are lessons. I have trained a fair number of anglers through time and this is what i guess would be most enjoying for me. I am 34 years old and have been fishing all my life. In this segment my goal would be not to put you on fish, but to teach you how to find a fish and how to catch it, methods, environment, role of water levels and much more. Simply said, all the info, which is normaly hidden from a client would be available. For example, using jigs which is something that is often doen on our waters. However there is much more to jigs than just spalshing it into water and hoping for fish, let`s say:

size and weight of jigs and its influence, color of jig, how to use a jig, combination of diffrent weights of jigs and diffrent types and weights of lines,inducing a take with jig, strenght of rod, lenght of rod, jigs used as emergency tackle, deliberate fishing with jigs, rods tailored for use of jigs, lines tailored for use of jigs, balancing a tackle, optimum conditions for jigging, why use jigs in nonoptimum conditions, how to use jigs from banks with heavy vegetation (trees, bushes)
etc. there is much more

Same list could be done for many other things that are used in wild fish fishing.

Client would be forwarded a list of possible things he could learn and he would select, be advised on how long something would take etc.

Of course this would be much more expensive than guiding as you are buying knowledge. You would be given access to local knowledge which is either hidden from you or not available in a guide at all. The end goal is that you could come to a water and be able to read it, identify likely places, be able to adopt to diffrent situation etc. on your own.

Would something like that be interesting?

BlueOne

Knowledge should be free....... long live the internet.

Just my personal ethos, i dont divulge or exploit location information that could be potentially damaging to wild fish or fragile places.

Isn't it the case that Guides / Coaches in Slovenia have to be licensed?

Presumably, if you were to start a fishing business and gain income from it, irrespective of whether you called yourself a guide or not, you too would need to complete and qualify under the national regulations.

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[I]"I still don't know why I fish or why other men fish, except that we like it and it makes us think and feel."[/I] Roderick L Haig-Brown

[url]www.wildfly.net[/url]

[url]http://www.gameanglinginstructors.co.uk/[/url]

Sorry to say this, but i think you're on a hiding to nothing.

The problem is, knowledge is widely available on the internet these days, and fora such as this one are invaluable in picking up new skills/knowledge

- Clients who pay for a guide want to be put on fish, end of. Also in your example, if i had a guide who suggested jigging, i would expect him to tell me why he wanted a certain size, location, cast etc, rather than just giving me a jig.

- You say you'll be a lot more expensive than a guide? Why? because you're selling knowledge. Isn't this what a guide is selling also?

- you can't send someone a pamphlet telling them how to read rivers and hatches. every where is different and learning to read a river takes years of practice.

Good luck in your venture, i hope you do well, but i get the impression you'd do better as an enthusiastic and knowledhable guide, after all first impressions count and client bases are built throught word of mouth

Cheers
Alex

There are no licences for guides in Slovenia. There was an idea (no wonder as the current situation is a bit of chaos, where everyone who is able to hold a rod is a guide), but nothing has come out of it yet.

Nobody would guide to fragile places, but guiding for wild fish is something diffrent than for "wild". It is very easy to take someone to a well know, well stocked (which is normaly well hidden) place, and present stocked fish as wild (if he is naive enough), something else, might not be that easy, but each to their own.

Thank you for your opinions, very much appreciated.

BlueOne

I forgot to ad the part about knowledge. In Slovenia you can get a guide from somewhere around 120EUR and to 180EUR. However some people pay 300 to 500EUR per day for guide (those are normally unoffical guides, you must be a friend to get such guiding). What is even more interesting, none of those 300-500EUR guides is going to give you any warranty on big fish. Some of those cheaper guides will. I will leave it up to you to decide why people who know that they can get a 4 timec cheaper guide and big fish, decide against it and pay 500EUR.

You also pay for casting lessons, flyfishing schools. And that is just the simplest basic of basic knowledge. And to be honest, your casting can be horrible, but you can catch plenty of fish. Actually, often it is necessary to deliberately destroy your casting, to get to fish at all. Or you can be a splendid caster, but catch none... Just my view.

BlueOne

I tought about this a bit and i am a bit surprised.

There obviously is a need for flyfishing schools, which teach basic knowledge often on stockies for a rather high price for such level of knowledge.

But from what was written here there actually is there no need for individualy based school (that`s what i meant with lessons) in which one would be introduced to rods from #3 to #12 diffrent lines, flies from microscopic dryflies to 30cm streamers, beingable to use them, explained when and where to use them, tought how to cast with that, introduced to specilised non serial rods tailord for waters, learn how to stalk fish, how to hide signature in water, how to spot fish (surprisingly big number of people actually have problems with such basic things), telling apart from visual signs and behaviour which specie it is, reading fish behaviour to find out what it is feeding on, why at one time one would use a 6m tippet, yet 5m higher 30cm tippet, learn about spoiled casts and why are they necessary, learn to roll cast with sinking and fast sinking lines (surprisingly any people don`t do that, although it is extremely usefull in canyons etc.), locating feeding locations, reading waters, understanding why empty water is not actually empty, learning how to set apart stocklies from wild fish, change of feeding behaviour of trout with water levels, how to fish for example from forrested blank, reading damage on the fish, which is from heron which from other bird, predator like, hucho and pike, differences in damage to fins when it is damage coused by predator vs damaged coused by farm reasing of the fish and much much more. In the end, a person going through that should be able to adapt to conditions on our waters, be able to come to a roaring 6m deep hole with water boiling all over the place and be able to spot for example wild rainbows using a cover of bubbles, be able to locate possible holes for brownies, knew how to get down, how to adopt, how to cast (such holes cna be space limited), get 3m upstream and be able to adapt to 30cm water, look around and althpugh he wuld niot see a fish, would know that this is a place to come back in te evening by the signs he would read from water and the bank etc.

The fact that there is a need for basic thing but not for the advanced and the fact that one can be over his head in work if he is willing to guide on stocked waters, selling the illusion of wild fish is a bit depresing. Not from business point of view but from a point of local angler, as this means, that those who justify such behaviour towards our waters with an excuse that that is what turist want, are unfortunately right.

BlueOne

Just one bit of advice Blue One

Change that you tube signature tune!

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[COLOR="Blue"]"A fish seen is a fish nearly caught"[/COLOR]

Hi Blue one, I think your goals are admirable, but let's be honest, to gain the amount of information you've described is not the job of a day. you'd need many weeks of intense lessons to at least start to learn all of that. I would guess that most people would prefer to just go fishing, and if they get one or two, then so much the better. while fishing and chatting to other fishers the knowledge/tactics/ etc will begin to be learned, and learned to areas specific to a particular angler. What i mean is, learning to fish a 30' hole in a river, or spot rainbows using bubbles as cover is irrelevant to the reservoir/competition/small stillwater man. and learning to stalk a wild brown is also pointless if you like to fish small stillwaters for jumbo rainbows. I take people out for a day on my area of expertise, and try and help them with any problems they may have in that particular discipline. If i was to fish Windermere, or Leven I'd largely like a fish out of water and need some local knowledge, but i'd love to build knowledge slowly by success and failure. No one is an expert at all areas of our sport and if there were such an angler, they'd be far to busy fishing to pass on any tips..!

Cheers
Alex