A buddy and I are going on a two day guided trip in early April. It will be a float trip primarily for trout, maybe some smallmouth but I'm not sure. How much should we tip the guide per day or for two days? I know you may consider performance some, but what's the range? Do you consider percentage of the cost for the trip or so much per day? Maybe so much per fish!

There was recently an extensive discussion of this very topic on www.ifish.net Here is the address of that thread
[www.ifish.net]


I hope that works

Sorry, I guess my attempt to link you to the thread didn't work. It's on there, if you just go to www.ifish.net and page down a little.

For me, tipping is for guides who are pleasant, helpful and even entertaining. If I happen to get into good fish, that's great, but I don't expect the guide to perform miracles. Even though the guide should know where the fish ought to be, some days you can't buy a fish. I would never tip a guide who's rude or unpleasant, or one who also tries to fish, somehow they need to get the message that they should take up another line of work. Fortunately I've gotten to be reasonably good friends with a couple of guides and now we just go fishing for fun.

Tip as much as you can afford if the guide was pleasant and you learned some valuable fishing info or maybe a new technique. You might think fishing for a livin is the good life and to a certain extent it is, but it is still a lot of hard work. The knowledge he shares took alot of trail and errror and it cost him plenty to aquire.
Then you have guides who are "Boat Drivers" They arent hard to spot. They eat constantly ,pass gas, tell lies about the good ole days, and offer no helpful information whatsoever. If you happen to get one of these guys try to make the best of it and end the trip with a firm, empty, handshake.

This Thursday is our 4th guided spring Steelhead trip here in Michigan. Although the price of the trip has gone up from $295 to $325, the two of us combined have always tipped the guide $100 - because our guide always has another rod ready if the line breaks on the one we're using, he pulls any weeds off the hook after we retrieve, and provides great conversation as well. Since we're going on a Friday this time, our normal guide can't make it - instead we're fishing with the owner of the guide service - I hope he was the one that trained our regular guide how to treat the customer.