How Fishpond Gives Guides Their Credit

By Spencer Durrant | Managing Editor

Fishpond has the reputation for creating some of the most durable fly fishing nets on the market – not to mention excellent packs and vests. But something that’s stood out to me about them over the years has been their consistent commitment to storytelling. They tell the stories of guides, of anglers, of the passions and triumphs that make fly fishing so addicting.

And in a brand-new video, they make the case for guides being worth every penny – especially in today’s world. Guides, in my opinion, don’t get the credit they deserve for the role they play as therapists, as teachers, and as mentors for everyone within the fly fishing community. Sure, guides get the credit when a client lands a once-in-a-lifetime fish, but we forget just how crucial a role they really play.

In full disclosure, I am a guide and a high school teacher. I have a few friends who do the same thing, and as Landon Mayer says in this Fishpond video, if I weren’t teaching something about fly fishing, I’d be teaching in some regard.

A lot of us guides are that way. We’re natural teachers, we’re curios as all get out, and we have a passion for the rivers and lakes that makes a “real” job darn near impossible. I worked in corporate America for five years, bouncing from marketing job to job, hating just about every minute of it. Not until I left and started out on my own as a freelance fly fishing writer – a career every bit as perilous as it sounds – did I find what I was looking for.

I found happiness, and I found purpose. That’s what guides get out of taking clients on the water, or the good ones do, anyway. And that happiness is infectious. Aside from the odd incorrigible client, most folks who spend a day in the boat or wading a small creek with a guide, leave feeling better. Even getting skunked can be fun, if you have the right attitude about it.