You’ll Need a Guide is a collection of humorous stories about guided fishing trips, ranging from fishing for rainbow trout on the McCloud River in California to fly casting for the silver streak of the shallows – bonefish – in the Bahamas. It is the antidote to pictures in an Orvis catalog or a fly fishing magazine showing a brawny dude with perfect teeth wearing Simms gear, holding a rainbow the size of a small pig. Casual readers will enjoy the wry commentary. Fly fishermen will alternately groan with recognition and then belly laugh when the author struggles under a guide’s demanding eye.
Praise for You’ll Need a Guide
“… Fantastic story of our day… great writing.”
– Allan Blankenship, Guide
Weed, California
“Great story… best written I’ve read, keeps your attention to the end.”
– Bill Howard, Mars Bay Lodge
Andros, Bahamas
“A real blast …funny stuff.”
– Captain Kevin Mihailoff, Guide
Chokoloskee, Florida
From Amazon: YOU need to read it!
These stories are for everyone. I’m not a fisherman, and I really enjoyed the book. Craig writes with a clear and understandable style, and his tales are about the foibles of any task. Successes and failures, advances and setbacks, adventure and irony.
-David B.
Excerpts from the Book
On selecting a guide:
“Being fly fishermen, we need a special sort of a guide. We need someone with an expensive flats boat, a poling platform, a push pole made of rare-earth metals, and a stash of Sage and Loomis rods that have been hand-polished by Cal Tech Ph.D. candidates. We need someone whose daily tariff for putting all these material goods at our disposal is equal to the annual income of a moderately prosperous Vietnamese village. We also need someone who will not guffaw and injure himself, falling off the poling platform when Jim or I make what we refer to as a “cast.” …. Snookin’.com
On fishing for bonefish:
“Bonefishing is a team sport. There is you, your fishing companion, and the guide. You are there to cast at the bonefish, avoiding stepping on your fly line, hooking the fly on your pants or falling into the boat well. Your companion is there to lounge about, make abusive comments, and fetch the beer out of the cooler. The guide is there to pole the boat for hours, find bonefish, advise the paying cargo where the bonefish are, position the boat so you have wind and sun to your liking, and then stifle a groan when you line the fish.”….Foreword to You’ll Need a Guide
Marshall Craig 