| Forget now about the battle of clients vs. charter captains that I wrote about in my last post. Let’s turn our attention to more serious matters. Can we, out of the hundreds of postings that were part of that fight, discern any practical lessons that we, as clients of guides or charter captains, can learn that will make our trips more fun and fruitful? Here’s my own distillation of what I believe are the major points:
1. Do your homework. Spend some time thinking about how, where and why you want to take a charter trip and then discuss your ambitions with the captain before you book the charter. An honest captain will tell you if he’s not set up to do the kind of fishing you want and you can look elsewhere for a more satisfactory trip.
2. Be truthful in telling the captain your experience level. He’ll find out soon enough, anyway, and if you’ve inflated your angling credentials he’ll have a lot less respect for you. If you need help, ask. Then learn.
3. Don’t be late for your charter. Especially don’t be late and either drunk or hung over. And if you are late, don’t expect the charter to go beyond the stated hour at which it is scheduled to end.
4. Keep control of your tackle. The most frequent sin in this area seems to be letting sinkers bang against the charter boat’s gelcoat. That’s an annoyance for the captain. But the worst sin is letting a hook fly around the cockpit and sink into somebody’s flesh. That’s just plain dangerous. There’s no excuse for that kind of carelessness.
5. Minimize alcohol consumption during the charter. A beer or two, okay. Four or five? Not. Hard liquor? Save it for cocktails after you’re back at the dock.
6. Don’t give the captain advice about where to fish or how to fish. If you want to catch a certain species of fish, be sure you’re fishing in a place where that fish swims. Many species are migratory and while you caught a bunch of them on that last trip six months ago, they may have moved on.
7. Understand that it’s called “fishing” and not “catching” for a reason. Don’t be fooled by the fishing shows on television. That 27-minute show of the pros reeling ‘em in every few minutes probably took three days of very hard fishing to shoot. I’ve booked some of the best guides and come back empty handed, but I’ve always learned something. And I’ve always had fun.
8. Don’t bring a handheld GPS. I don’t necessarily agree with this one, but it appears to be a big deal with charter captains. What I don’t get is why I, who paid a lot of money for the trip, can’t mark a spot when the bozos in the center console who purposely followed us out come within a hundred feet busily recording our position.
9. Treat the boat’s tackle with respect. Don’t go adjusting drags without asking the captain or crew. They have a lot more experience with their tackle than you do.
10. Don’t ask the captain to keep undersized fish or to violate bag limits.
11. Bring sufficient food and drink, but don’t bring it in a huge cooler.
12. If you enjoy the trip, give ‘em a tip. That applies especially to the mate or mates. |
