I got some great footage. He called and asked for my raw footage.  No offer of a discount on the next trip.  Haha. 
 

what?  I own it right?   He wants to put some of my topwater action on his website to boost sales. 

I add a small watermark to all my publicly available videos. (over 1K)

Easy to do and has cut down on the number of folks reposting my content. 

If you feel like helping the outfit a bit, I'd say go for it.

With almost 9K views, this one may have gotten the lodge a couple of clients.

https://youtu.be/UYTzJHDCdMo?si=Nmw-SC05rPu4mH27

A-Jay

You can say no.  

 

If you have some reason for the footage to be of value to you, like you have or are building in a YT channel or something, maybe you could negotiate something... Like, "footage courtesy of Darth-Baiter..." On however he uses it.

 

End of the day, you own it and have no obligation to provide it to him.  I don't really see a negative to providing it to help him out though....Good relationships with people in the fishing world are nice to have.

Hi Darth,

     You might wrangle a discount for a future trip.  Say for every thousand views he takes a small percentage off your next trip?  If he is using it to promote his business and it is helping increase his bookings.  I would also do the watermark thing AJay mentioned.

FM

 

1 hour ago, Fishingmickey said:

Hi Darth,

     You might wrangle a discount for a future trip. 

 

 

My first thought.

 

No.  I don't want to be laughed at some Americas funniest video bloopers show. 

IDK, I guess I’m different but  I wouldn’t care, give it to him. 

 

39 minutes ago, king fisher said:

No.  I don't want to be laughed at some Americas funniest video bloopers show. 

I promise I won’t laugh 

I he made a request. 

Your turn... 

Serve, return serve...

It must be worth something, or he wouldn't have asked...

If I enjoyed my time and thought he was a good dude, I'd say yes.  It doesn't cost you anything and if it helps him out then you're doing a nice thing.  I think too often we are thinking "how does this benefit me?" when we could focus instead on how it benefits others.  Not trying to be judgmental or preachy since I too would initially wonder how I'd benefit if I were in your position.  But after thinking about it, I know I would tell him to use it (assuming he was a nice fella).  Just my 2 cents.  

Clients that guides truly like, even if it's not intentional, typically get the best efforts... 

 

If you want to fish with him again and it not be awkward at the least, I would just give it to him, see how he responds, will tell you a lot about him right there... 

 

A fishing guide in NorCal, even a good one that is booked often is still living in poverty unless he has other sources of income... It costs twice as much to live out there as most other places one would reside as a guide... Assuming this guy has a real Bass boat that requires a garage, etc... He has to run a LOT of trips every year, just to break even, heck it's like a $1,000.00 a year to plate a 1/2 pickup in California alone... 

 

There are three types of seasoned guides...

 

1) Broke ones that love their job.

2) Ones that love the job with a Wife with a decent job that includes health benefits that make just enough money their Wife is fine with their guiding profession. Benefits are a huge one obviously as there are none for being a guide...

3) Retired or Trustees doing it for something to do, lot of Trustees are guides, especially ones where the Trust had a condition that they have to work to get the money... Some of the most famous guides and anglers in the nation, fall under that category, many of them would have never made it otherwise...

 

No matter which of these categories you fall under, being a good guide is genuinely a fair bit of work, you have to wear a lot of hats to make a guide service successful. For every hour you are guiding, there is another hour of prep time on the back end, at least, plus a lot of expenses, fishing gear isn't cheap, boat isn't cheap, truck is not cheap, insurance, gas, etc... not to mention the thousands and thousands of hours it takes to learn enough to be a good guide... Most clients only see it from their perspective and they miss a lot of what goes into it... 

 

I lived a good life, wasn't wealthy, but wasn't broke as a full time guide in SW Michigan, it took one year in NorCal to realize even if I ran 200+ trips a year, I would still be barely making it and even then buying a home likely wasn't a reality out there. Something to keep in mind, I see you are in Santa Rosa... Crazy expensive out there... I can't imagine it in today's interest rates, cost of living, etc... I lived out there in 2017/2018 when your neck of the woods burned really bad, was truly sad to see all that devastation. Was the first time I had seen such a thing with my own eyes in such a populated area...

 

Just to add a bit more perspective, many if not most clients would be all excited the guide asked to use their footage sorta thing, so from his perspective, he may not be thinking about it as you are, would keep that in mind. Building a guide service is a lot like creating a Family of sorts, most of my regulars I became Friends with to some degree, I fish with some of them for fun to this day now that I have not guided in years. Not all guides are like this, but many of the successful ones have pretty tight relationships with their people and frankly, it makes the trips more enjoyable for everyone that way... Video footage and that sort of stuff is certainly cool, but that isn't where you get the bulk of your clients from, in fact social media is one of the worst places to promote a guide service, you attract more anglers to your area than clients or worse yet, more guides... So while I am sure the footage you have is super cool, I wouldn't look at it like you are sitting on a gold mine...

 

75% of trips a good guide books, come from word of mouth, not advertising, not videos, not social media, etc... Party boat style charters that load up a pile of people are different, but your real guides that take 1-2 people out at a time, most of their trips come from word of mouth, guaranteed. The most sure fire way to know you have a legit guide, no website, rarely even have business cards, but booked all the time... I have Friends that are booked years in advance, literally, don't even have business cards lol If they are posting on social media and doing all kinds of that type of stuff, they either enjoy the attention or they aren't retaining customers for one reason or another... 

 

 

Yes. But it is yours to do with as you please. 

Great post, @Goby. So informative and measured. 

The guide was okay. It’s his territory that’s great.   Guides kinda shady to be honest.  He really was more of a headhunter for the boat.   On the boat he just fished with us. 

3 minutes ago, Darth-Baiter said:

On the boat he just fished with us. 

 

If I could afford a guide (I can't.), I'd want him/her to teach me. Catching bass would be a distant second goal. I'd want to take what they taught me and catch more bass for the rest of my life. If a guide I hired wasn't teaching, I'd feel like I was paying way too much for a boat ride.

 

However, when I guide friends for fun, my number one goal is to put them on bass. I want to give them the busiest possible boat. Luckily, this is pretty easy in a tandem canoe because they're in the bow on my pond and I know where the bass hang and a canoe is steered from the stern, so I literally aim them at bass. At every sweet spot, the bow angler gets the first and best cast, so I've never failed to put a pal on bass. 

No fishing guide could afford my modeling/acting royalties.  😆

48 minutes ago, Swamp Girl said:

 

If I could afford a guide (I can't.), I'd want him/her to teach me. Catching bass would be a distant second goal. I'd want to take what they taught me and catch more bass for the rest of my life. If a guide I hired wasn't teaching, I'd feel like I was paying way too much for a boat ride.

 

However, when I guide friends for fun, my number one goal is to put them on bass. I want to give them the busiest possible boat. Luckily, this is pretty easy in a tandem canoe because they're in the bow on my pond and I know where the bass hang and a canoe is steered from the stern, so I literally aim them at bass. At every sweet spot, the bow angler gets the first and best cast, so I've never failed to put a pal on bass. 

If you are not from FL and you go with a guide there during winter you may not learn anything that's useful at home. It's a different world. I fished with one 2 days in So FL in late December, one day for largemouth and one day for peacocks. I caught about 50 each day. Then I went home all hyped up and zeroed twice because it was winter here. I did get some practice pitching/flipping shallow weeds. But I mostly walked the dog and used a jerkbait. I did ask the guy questions as I thought of them. He told me it had been a very long time since he had someone fish two days without a backlash. 😀

1 hour ago, the reel ess said:

It's a different world.

 

I believe you. 

Dang, @Goby knows his stuff 

It would depend on what the guide wanted to use the video for, and how bad I looked in the video.

4 hours ago, Darth-Baiter said:

The guide was okay. It’s his territory that’s great.   Guides kinda shady to be honest.  He really was more of a headhunter for the boat.   On the boat he just fished with us. 

I kinda wish I knew about this little piece of info. I probably would have had a different answer.

 

To be fair, when you hire a guide or anyone for that matter you can tell if you have a connection with that person. You can tell if a person cares about their clients in less than 10 minutes.

 

If I feel that connection then, yes, definitely, I will try and help them. I think most would rather do repeat business or by word of mouth. And I definitely would help that person if they are trying to build up a client base any way I can.

 

The ones that show a don't care attitude are the ones who generally don't last.

Having never been in this position I can’t say what I would do but if he fished the front of the boat the whole time I’m inclined to say no. Now with that said I’m a big believer in you get what you pay for and you need to do some research before making any investment of both time and money. Lastly I will say it’s crazy how smart these phones are as I received an e-mail from another fishing site with an article about becoming a guide right after opening this tab.

Never been in that situation, I guess it would depend on the experience.

The only times I've used a guide was back in the 80's salmon fishing on Lake Ontario trolling.

A bunch of us would go up there in the fall, one year we were unable to use the guide we've been using so had to find another one. This wasn't easy back then with no internet.

We book this one, get up there and go on his boat, first we notice is he has an ankle monitor on 

Turned out to be ok, but was a little bit un-nerving at first  

more to the story.  

 

he didnt ask if it was okay...just "hey, send me the raw footage".

47 minutes ago, Darth-Baiter said:

more to the story.  

 

he didnt ask if it was okay...just "hey, send me the raw footage".

 

I think he's Mister Bossy Britches and I'd decline.

Do you want to give it to him?