by Capt. Justin Ravenel, Contributing Writer
You know as a full time fishing guide I meet see and hear all kinds of interesting stories from my clients. I absolutely love that aspect of the job. Meeting people from different walks of life and having that common goal of fishing is so rewarding. Today I would like to share two types of the stories that re-occur the most on my skiff.
Most of these tales start the same way; “man let me tell about this one charter we took in fill in the blank”. I love hearing about the good and the bad in this particular genre of stories for obvious reasons haha. This one goes like, “We fished all over the place and only caught one fish all day.” Now coming from guy that spends nearly every day on the water I can tell you that the discrepancy between even just two trips in the same day can have drastically different results. I’m no fan of clichés but that’s why they call it fishing. I usually follow up with one or two questions that can tell me a lot more about the experience they had. Like, “did you move around and try new spots during the trip or did you spend the majority of the time in one spot?” Or, “what was the guides overall behavior during the trip”; were they trying new baits, or new locations? In other words did they have a decent plan B, C and D? If the guide sat around on one spot the entire trip then it’s a red flag that they are lazy. Even if all the backup plans fail and nothing is caught then you can still rest easy knowing they tried everything they could for you.
Next is the infamous grouchy guide story. Now this one really gets to me because I am so thankful for every booking I get and I actually love being on the water. It makes me wonder about these types of guides a lot. One of the ways I look at this business is the client has plenty of choices when it comes to a captain for hire. Sure maybe they caught some fish but if the captain was rude and just generally unpleasant then why would they book that person again? Everyone has bad days but this is a business and the captain should act professional.
I like to keep folks smiling. Fish or no fish we are going to have fun whilst maintaining a calm relaxing atmosphere. Sometimes when we are having a tough day I’ll often joke, “now that I’ve got yall on the boat, one of my policies if we don’t catch anything is, I charge double!” I specialize in all forms of in-shore fishing and I have multiple boats to use for any occasion. Whether it’s just you and I stalking tish in the shallows or the entire family fishing for sea monsters I have you covered! I take a lot of pride in my Google reviews; please take a look and see for yourself!
