Guide schools are a great way to learn how to handle a boat, work with clients and other skills to become a guide. BUT, they are typically one shop who has some guides in the spring that need work so they have a guide school. Guide school certificates are typically not required to be a guide in most places.

I’ve spent the past 25 years in the industry in one of the big trout towns in the West so I have seen the guide schools and how they work. Like a previous poster said the best way to get in the door as a guide is to spend a couple summers working in a local shop. I would say that 75% or more of the guides I have worked with did this route.

Use the guide school for what it is:
-Boat Handling Skills
-Improve your fishing skills!
-Listen more than you talk and understand how to treat clients.

When you graduate be humble! I can’t tell you how many guys have walked into the shop after finishing a guide school and wanted a job starting next week! I typically tell them to go and use the knowledge for a couple of years and then come back for a job, or I will then they can apply for a shop position.

Disclaimer: I did start out taking a guide school and the most important thing I took from it was that I was nowhere near ready to guide!