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368 Posts
The “paying guides to find spots” thread prompted me to post a question I’ve had for the past year. Didn’t want to hijack that thread though...
We moved to Flagler Beach just over a year ago and I’ve been struggling to learn how to get on inshore fish around here. I suspect that if I traveled further North nearer St Augustine, or South toward Daytona near the inlets that I would find better fishing, but I like to stay close to home and not trailer the boat...
Most of the guides I see online all seem to concentrate on and reference fishing the areas further North and South of my specific location. Friends tell me to hire a guide and don’t tell them that I live here... I won’t do that, and I want to be honest that I live here and want to learn more about the surrounding area to more consistently find the fish.
I’ve done a lot of reading the past year about where I should be fishing and have a lot of “spots” that I have tried. Some of those are successful, some not. Most I continue to revisit regardless, while I continue to try and find some correlation to tides, temps, time of year, etc, etc. Usually when I go out I try some of the old spots and make time to try some new likely areas. I’ve had good days, but have more days where I’m skunked... I just haven’t dialed-in for any consistency. I don’t want to end up in a situation where I hire a guide and he then takes me around and hits several “spots” that I already fish occasionally or planned to, and then feel bad or like I shouldn’t go back to it...
The question is, how do I find the best local guide who will teach me how to best fish the local area? I can call and talk to all of them but generally most are just going to tell me what I want to hear. I’ve used a lot of guides over the years in LA and the FL gulf coast, and while most did good putting us on fish, very few actually tried to teach us anything even though that had been discussed as something we wanted in advance.
We moved to Flagler Beach just over a year ago and I’ve been struggling to learn how to get on inshore fish around here. I suspect that if I traveled further North nearer St Augustine, or South toward Daytona near the inlets that I would find better fishing, but I like to stay close to home and not trailer the boat...
Most of the guides I see online all seem to concentrate on and reference fishing the areas further North and South of my specific location. Friends tell me to hire a guide and don’t tell them that I live here... I won’t do that, and I want to be honest that I live here and want to learn more about the surrounding area to more consistently find the fish.
I’ve done a lot of reading the past year about where I should be fishing and have a lot of “spots” that I have tried. Some of those are successful, some not. Most I continue to revisit regardless, while I continue to try and find some correlation to tides, temps, time of year, etc, etc. Usually when I go out I try some of the old spots and make time to try some new likely areas. I’ve had good days, but have more days where I’m skunked... I just haven’t dialed-in for any consistency. I don’t want to end up in a situation where I hire a guide and he then takes me around and hits several “spots” that I already fish occasionally or planned to, and then feel bad or like I shouldn’t go back to it...
The question is, how do I find the best local guide who will teach me how to best fish the local area? I can call and talk to all of them but generally most are just going to tell me what I want to hear. I’ve used a lot of guides over the years in LA and the FL gulf coast, and while most did good putting us on fish, very few actually tried to teach us anything even though that had been discussed as something we wanted in advance.