A DAY IN THE LIFE OF AN ICE FISHING GUIDE

When I was a kid, my dream job was to be a hunting and fishing guide. My dad wasn’t technically a guide, but all of his friends considered him the resident guide, because he was always taking people fishing and helping them become better anglers, feed their families, and creating memories. I still run into people that knew my dad who the first thing they do is launch into a story about that time he took them fishing. He helped so many people and I always wanted to follow in his footsteps but make an actual living at it. I began guiding ice anglers on small ponds throughout southern New Hampshire. I thought that because I got my guides license and “hung a shingle” that customers were going to be beating my door down. I also thought that transitioning from carpentry to being a fishing guide would be my chance to stop working so hard. Boy was I in for an awakening.

The alarm on my phone goes off at 4:30am six days a week, playing a tune that I think is designed to make you happy about waking up. The tune often gets stuck in my head for at least part of the ride to the lake and is usually the reason I turn on the radio. I normally wake in one of three ways; excited, exhausted, or both. I may be excited because the weather forecast is good and the fishing has been good, or maybe it’s the clients I’m most excited about, but when I have strung several long days together, and the weather looks less favorable, I’m usually more tired than excited. Anyway, I brush my teeth, splash some water on my face, make my coffee, and I’m out the door, usually in about 20-minutes from the time my alarm goes off. I’m usually so tired, especially as the season wears on, that I’m in autopilot mode when I leave and if everything isn’t in the same place every day, I am sure to forget it. There’s something strange about the walk from my front door to my truck. I don’t know if it’s because I’m not quite awake but not as half asleep as when I first woke up, but it’s my least favorite part of the day. I don’t think what I do for a living really sinks in until a start the drive to work, but the second I put my truck in gear it’s as if I realize where I am headed and my whole mood changes.

I drive 1.5-hours to get to the north end of Lake Winnipesaukee. About halfway there I stop at a local bait shop to pick up bait for the day and continue on. It seems like a far drive to most, but I don’t mind it. There’s little traffic on the road at that hour and I love my job. I have a good friend who lets me store all of my ice fishing gear at a camp on the lake, including heated storage for my snowmobile and a place to store my Snowdogs and all my shelters and sleds. It’s a favor I never feel like I can fully repay. It saves me time and the hassle of trailering my gear and finding parking on a daily basis. Not to mention the wear and tear on my truck and trailer. I arrive at the camp at 6:30am. Most of my gear is ready from the day before, but I have to transfer items that need to come home each day, unplug Vexilars and load them up, and then I’m off across the lake to meet the day’s clients. Group numbers range from one angler to as many as 30. With groups larger than ten people I usually hire another guide, one of my good friends Chuck or Shawn, to help me.

When my clients arrive at 7am, I give them a brief safety talk and let them know what to expect. I will give them my guess about how I expect the fishing to be that day, but remind them that it’s only a guess and that it’s fishing and not an exact science. I care very much about my clients and want them to catch as many fish as possible, but regardless of how many fish they catch, I want them to have a fun time. People are all different and meeting the needs of every type of person can get stressful. Some are easy and require little more than good conversation, while others can be a handful. Stress is exhausting and the older I get the more exhausting it is.

I load everyone up on my snowmobile and sleds, or sleds towed behind my Snowdog depending on the number of clients that day, and we head out to the fishing spot. Once there, the first thing I do is set up the shelter and kick the heat on. Occasionally I’ll have folks who insist they don’t want a shelter, usually repeats who know that no shelter means we can move more often if the bite is slower, so I can get right to the fishing. Others are first time ice anglers, and they’re cold. One of the most important lessons I’ve learned over the past 16 years is that client comfort is far more important than catching fish and only second to safety. Cold clients are miserable and being miserable is what they remember most. I want them to have fun and I want them to come back. The best way to ensure that is to

make sure they are warm and that the conversation is good. You could say I’m part fishing guide and part therapist at times. I’m always evaluating my clients so as to anticipate their needs and get on their level intellectually or emotionally. It can be draining. I don’t know how full-time therapists do it.

Once the shelter is set up I begin drilling holes and setting up lines. We usually fish a combination of jigging rods and tip ups, depending on how the fishing was the day before. When tip up fishing on Lake Winnipesaukee for lake trout and white perch, we spread our tip ups out as far as possible so I can cover a large area and hopefully target different fish with each line. Once the lines are in, I’m not one to drive to each hole to check them or help my clients catch a fish, so I do a fair amount of walking on the ice every day.

My guide trips are six-hours long and end at 1pm. Just before the trip is over I begin picking up the tip ups and packing away anything that was left out. I’m a stickler for keeping things in their place, so there isn’t much gear left around, but there are usually chairs and whatnot that my clients were using. Then I pack up the shelter, load everyone up, and head back to the launch. There, we unload everyone and if they kept fish that day, I get those transferred to their cooler. After a thank you and reminder that I will send them all of the images from that day in an email, I bid them farewell and head back across the lake to the camp.

Once I get back to the camp, I park my snowmobile and look at how many people I have the next day and what the weather will be like so I can determine what I will need for gear. I prep as much as I can so I don’t have much to do in the morning. The older I get the more the saying “work smarter not harder” make sense. Just like I’m always looking for ways to be more efficient, I’m also always looking for ways to make my job easier. I plug in Vexilars and organize anything that needs it before making the hour and a half drive home. Once I get home, I plug in my bait cooler and get my lunch ready for the next day before I shower and relax.

They say the average adult male burns 2000 calories a day. I read somewhere that the average adult male participating in a winter activity burns as much as 4000 calories a day, because the body burns so many calories creating heat. I often tell my clients that if all they do is stand around and do nothing, they will be tired at the end of the day just from staying warm. The same goes for me. I don’t know how many calories I actually burn, but I know that I usually eat all day long and I’m smoked at the end of the day. Now string six days like that together for ten weeks and I’m usually cross-eyed by the end of the season. Being a fulltime fishing guide is far more exhausting that I ever imagined, but far more rewarding. As exhausting as it is, it is one of the most fulfilling things I’ve ever done and there’s nothing I’d rather be that tired from.

Tim Moore is a full-time professional fishing guide in New Hampshire. He owns and operates Tim Moore Outdoors, LLC. He is a member of the New England Outdoors Writers Association, and the producer of TMO Fishing on YouTube and the Hooked with TMO Fishing Podcast. Visit www.TimMooreOutdoors.com for more information.