Guided By Grant
Angler's Mail|March 21,2017

GUIDING, coaching – call it what you will, and whatever you call it, it just hasn’t seemed to fit in around this small island we call Blighty.

Steve Collett
Guided By Grant

I have had a dalliance with this myself, offering my mind, body and soul to prospective lure anglers wanting to shorten the route to catching big fish on lures… I lasted one day.

The gentleman who had handed over a princely sum and the cost of a boat and fuel expenses for my day had turned up, full of the joys of himself, and proceeded to become ‘Mr Elevenerife’! You know the kind; if you have been to Tenerife, he has been to 'Elevenerife'. If I had a budgie, he had a buzzard.

No sooner had we travelled a hundred yards in the boat than I turned back, gave him his money back and went fishing by myself! Guiding’s not for me.

I think I would rather pass on my knowledge for free via Angler’s Mail and a few open days. I can’t sit on a boat, captive, for money, listening to Charlie Big Potatoes all day. There is not enough money in the world to make me do that.

With my past experiences still burning a hole in my head, I wanted to see what the other side was like – you know, general coarse fishing coaching. You can’t really call it guiding, as it wouldn’t take long to guide someone around ten pegs in a farmer’s field!

Coaching scene

The coaching scene is growing in the UK, and so it should, but it seems to hold a reluctance with anglers not wanting to part money to learn. It’s crazy that the same people would happily pay handsomely to learn how to hold a golf bat proper!

I’m becoming a big fan of paying an expert to brush up on my skill, and today the skills I needed to brush up on was pellet fishing.

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Denne historien er fra March 21,2017-utgaven av Angler's Mail.

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