How to Tip Fishing Guides and Lodges
You are paying your guide to compensate for your lack of skill or knowledge, the fish, and the weather so you can have the best day possible. Guides have years of fly fishing knowledge and local area knowledge. They already put in the work to learn how to locate fish, understand fish behavior, and how to present a fly in just the right way to convince a fish to take it. If you think that your business, organization, guide service or lodge could benefit from an association with us, please to get the ball rolling. We’re always looking to create new partnerships that allow us to enjoy distinctive fishing experiences and tell new stories. If you’re in a foreign country, make sure that you have a sufficient amount of the proper currency for tips.
Plus, tipping well can establish a good relationship with your guide so that you’ll have an even better time when you book them again. Some will say to tip the mates more than the captain because on some boat tips is all they’re working for. Don’t treat taking your guide out to dinner as part of the gratuity. Most hardworking guides consider the opportunity to spend precious evening hours with their clients part of their work day, not a bonus. If a guide is truly outstanding, has a great personality and is super attentive to the guests’ needs, this pay scale can be as high as you want to go.
In Central or South America, a $50 tip per day may be appropriate for your guide, whereas in an affluent country, $100 per day may be more appropriate. A dollar goes a lot further in some places, so take that into account. Just as a professional financial advisor knows which funds to invest in and which to avoid, a good fishing guide knows where the fish are and where they aren’t.
Keep in mind that you might not be the only trip they are prepping for at the same time. Stillwater Anglers is the premier outfitting service in the area. We provide the best value of high quality, inclusive professional services at competitive pricing. In some parts of Latin America, such as Venezuela and parts of Mexico, and in some European countries like France and Italy, gratuities are automatically added to restaurant and/or hotel bills. Be sure to know the customs so that you can avoid double-tipping.
Everybody knows that part of dining in a nice restaurant is tipping the server at the end of the meal. Some people will press a twenty into the hand of a hostess who goes out of her way to secure a better table in a nice restaurant. When traveling, Americans are also accustomed to tipping the skycap at the airport for assistance getting their luggage to the check-in counter, or the concierge for help in making dinner reservations. But many anglers consider tipping the guide at the end of a day of fishing only as an afterthought. The guides very much rely on tips as part of their earnings and count on receiving something.
Across the board, fifteen percent is considered the minimum amount to tip your guide, no matter if you are curious about how much to tip an Alaska fly fishing guide or a bass fishing guide in Texas. As a good rule of thumb, a good tip for a full-day guided fishing trip is $100 USD. In most parts of the world, youshould expect to tip both the captain and mate of an offshore boat independently of the lodge tip. The average gratuity for most operations works out to around $50 for the captain and $25 for each crew memberfor the entire boat, whether there are four anglers or only one. Some lodges and crews will expect higher gratuities, especially if they specialize in destination angling, but the most you should reasonably expect to tip a boat captain and crew collectively is $150 per day. Obviously, the crew and captain both have to work harder with a full boat, so consideration should be made if you are splitting the gratuity.
As the adult and person paying for the trip, the guide may make you a priority by default. For a simple walk-and-wade day on a small trout stream, it is probably closer to $50. When in doubt, go with the 20% rule and keep the minim above $50.
We think that one of the things that sets our outfitting services apart from the rest is that our trips are all-inclusive. That means after the price of your trip, the only thing you will have to buy is your fishing license, which you can do at The Fly Shop on the day of your trip. Our trips include all the gear you’ll need, including rods, reel, boots and waders, flies, terminal tackle, and even lunch and drinks. However, we know that sometimes a simple percentage doesn’t make sense. If you’re booking a huge $5000 multi-day package at a fancy resort, you most likely aren’t going to be tipping hundreds of dollars a day. Oftentimes your website will give you some tipping guidelines.
Dion Liriano is a 51-year-old American zookeeper who has retired from the business. He was once a highly successful director of the Zoo and Aquarium, but he has since hung up his gloves and moved on to other ventures. Dion's passion for animals began at a young age, when he would help his father care for their family pets. This love grew exponentially when he started working at the zoo; Dion quickly became one of the most experienced keepers in the business. He credits his success to the relationships he built with both staff and animals over the years.