WOMEN’SOUTDOORSNEWS January 2014
A good guide
would never
try to make
someone else
feel small. A
good guide
would take his
ego out of the
equation and
not be quick
to pass
judgement.
a fly. My guide was very knowledgeable and
good company – a recipe for a wonderful week
of fishing. I wanted him to enjoy his day, so I
offered him the rod.
We were drifting nicely at the hourglass of a
lake where the flow was funneling lots of food
for the bold pike. My guide started picking off
lunkers one after the other. He landed four fish,
bang, bang, bang, and bang. Twenty minutes
had passed and I wasn’t fishing.
I started to get frustrated because he wasn’t
giving me a chance to fish. I asked him to give
me a chance to put the camera down and cast
my fly. The words were still afloat in the thin
northern air when he hooked up again. I had to
pull out my own guide card and tell him to stop
fishing. A quiet unease fell over the boat. It
wasn’t much fun catching fish after that.
Successful guides don’t feel a need to hog the
water. Their sole focus is to ensure that their
client has the best, safest, and fishiest
experience possible. I love fishing with guides
who get as much pleasure from watching me
catch a quality fish as they do from catching it
themselves.
Pride
to one-up his client the only way he could:
flexing his fishing muscle.
A good guide would never try to make someone
else feel small. A good guide would take his
ego out of the equation and not be quick to
pass judgment.
Envy
Envy is characterized by an insatiable desire to
possess someone else’s traits, status, abilities,
or rewards. The also desire the entity and covet
what others have. Envy is also forbidden in the
Ten Commandments: “Neither shall you desire
anything that belongs to your neighbor.” Dante
defined envy as “a desire to deprive other men
of theirs.”
One of the funniest experiences I’ve had with a
guide getting caught with his hand in the cookie
jar happened a few years ago, but not so long
ago that the experience has lost its edge. I was
working with one of my regular shooters. It is a
running joke between us to see how long it
takes for the guide to try on his “funny stuff.”
Oftentimes they feel a need to ensure that they
catch the biggest fish on camera. Apparently a
number of guys still find it unpalatable for a
woman to catch the biggest fish. Yawn.
Pride is a desire to be more important or
attractive than others, failing to acknowledge
the good work of others, and excessive love of
self.
But this was a new record. The guide set the
anchor and said, “The fish are there. Start short
and work your way out until you reach your
maximum cast, and then we will drop down.”
I have had the great pleasure of spending time
with successful guides, and these are guides
who are proud of their local natural resources
and want to show them off. What better way to
do that than to make sure that their client fishes
every inch of promising water during their
limited time in the area?
“Great,” I said. “Go ahead, you first.” He looked
shocked. He didn’t expect that I would let him
have the first cast of the day. He started to pull
up the anchor rather than pull line off his reel.
He explained that the larger fish were in a
different location and that he needed to motor
to a new spot. I said to him, “Do I understand
this correctly? You put me over frog water?”
Wrath
Sob. It was a long week.
Wrath, also known as “rage” in its purest form,
Great guides whom I have had the pleasure of
presents with self-destructiveness, violence,
and hate that may provoke feuds that can go on fishing with are people who would never play
games at my expense. It is a shared success.
for centuries. Wrath may persist long after the
person who did another a grievous wrong is
dead. Feelings of anger can manifest in
different ways, including impatience, revenge,
“I love fishing with guides who
and vigilantism.
We have all heard the stories of the guide who
pulls out a trophy fish from under his client’s
nose with the excuse of, “I was only showing
him how to work the fly when all of a sudden
the fish hit. It was just luck.” The truth is that he
didn’t have respect for the sport and he wanted
get as much pleasure from
watching me catch a quality fish
as they do from catching it
themselves.”
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