I wouldn't be a guide if you put a gun to my head.
Paying customers can be great.
They also can be mouth-breathing assholes who expect the guide to make fish bite and get pissed when they don't. Fish don't always bite, even for the best guides and pro anglers. Yet the paying customer believes the guide is a magician who can automatically make it happen.
The guide has to be nice, friendly and chipper no matter what. Even if he's done everything right, mouth-breather will wander off to tell his buddies that Bigtime Pro Guide couldn't catch a fish and he wouldn't fish with him again ... yet he doesn't talk about how they stopped at X-number of places, tried 29 different lures and tactics and did everything possible. All he says is "the guide sucked."
If you can put up with those days, and those should be far fewer than the good ones if you're a good guide, more power to you.
I've always thought guides on Guntersville ask for less money than they can get, too. It's not like it's a gar hole. It's one of the premier lakes in the country. It's playing baseball at Yankee Stadium or Turner Field, not a Double-A stadium.
Poachers, what's the funniest guide story your FIL has ever told you?
I know a guide who said one of his clients crapped in the lining of his "fur"-trimmed hooded jumpsuit, didn't know it and got back in the boat after a "gotta go" pit stop in the woods. Guy's wife went nuts since they'd just bought the jumpsuit at the Walmarks that day. LOL
