Oct 18, 2018

The Value of a Guide Beyond Fishing

Why does The Best of New Zealand team always recommends using a fly fishing guide when fishing in New Zealand?

  1. Much of the fishing in New Zealand is sight fishing. Unlike in the USA, where anglers will float a river and cast to pools and pockets, in New Zealand one stalks a fish and then casts on sight. Working closely with an experienced guide means an extra set of eyes in addition to knowledge of the piece of water.
  2. Pieces of river will see more pressure from anglers at certain times of the year. Guides who communicate with each other will understand which beats have been fished between each other, who saw a third party fishing in a certain location, and hopefully come to agreement as where each will fish the next day so there aren't cross-ups.
  3. Perhaps the piece that goes most un-noticed is the risk mitigation from something tragic happening while on the river. Health concerns, accidents and unforeseen events do take place. Having someone there who has followed the Health & Safety guidelines will be better prepared to assist.

Through years of relationships with professional guides in New Zealand our team has worked to not only help our clients catch more fish (these guys really know what they are doing), but mitigate risk. Unfortunately there still exist too many rogue "guides" who advertise themselves as fishing experts but do not have the skills to guide properly nor provide help should things take a turn for the worse. They don't have the network and thus deliver (in our opinion) a less valuable service.

The reason for this post is because there was recently a fatality by a person hiking the Tongariro Crossing (see link below for more information). It happened without a guide present. And although this was not an accident that happened on the water, the situation can be easily applied.

Helping catch fish is certainly job one, but there is important value to an expert guide beyond this. Preparedness.

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Author: Frank Krieger