False you talking about?” His answer, “ you know, Zebco 101’ s, regular bass fishing gear.” That’s the night that I realized I needed to ask bet-ter questions. Luckily my clients were open to learning new things, and I had enough spinning gear in the boat to outfit everyone for the day. While in Canada several years ago we decided to hire a guide to take us walleye fishing. We were new to the Lake of the Woods, and had found that we needed to travel further than we were comfortable traveling to catch walleye. The guide’s boat was too small for me, my dad, my son, and the guide so we agreed to fish from my bass boat for the day. We were catch-ing walleye like crazy all morning, and had a great shore lunch of fresh walleye filets. Then, as we moved to the next spot, bang- crash, we hit a reef. Turns out that our guide could catch walleye, but didn’t know that part of the lake any better than we did - so much for being “ lo-cal”. A client of mine told me this story a few months ago. They hired a striper guide to go catch big Continued on page 44

False stripers on Lake Texoma. When they showed up, there were 4 other guys standing around waiting for the same guide. Turns out that the guide combined groups, so 6 guys plus guides were going out for a day of striper fishing. The guide launched the boat and headed out to fish. Once they reached their first spot, my client started to grab a rod. The guide stopped him and said “ you don’t get to touch the rods!” Clearly, this caused confu- “ Being guided is not about catching big fish or lots of them. It is your opportunity to learn. There are a lot of unanswered questions in fishing and a “ QUALITY” guide can shed some light on them. Learning why, when and how should be your primary objective, never WHERE. The where in fishing is dependent on far to many factors that will change many times during a sea-son or a day for that matter. Your guide should teach and you should learn” I have fished with Larry in the past and can assure you that IF you take an interest in asking the questions during your day or days on the water with him, you will come away a better an-gler. Regardless of your target species. Pro Fisherman Bob Mehsikomer Continued on page 63