To Fish With or Without a Guide

I was reading Kevin Frank’s great post from Feather Chucker the other day about fishing with his buddy Lance who is a professional fly fishing guide in North Carolina. It got me to thinking about guide fishing in general. My closest encounter with a fly fishing guide has been on the Internet and the owner of our local fly shop below our tailrace. I have often thought about using a guide when I am fishing the Caney Fork in Cartridge Tennessee. It is really a pressured tailrace with bank, wading fisherman, canoe and kayak fishermen on the water daily. There are a numbers of guides who frequent the area and stay quick busy throughout the year. I know I would probably land more trout and learn a lot more about this tailrace if I had a guide. So to convince myself I need a little guidance in unfamiliar streams and tailraces, I have list a few advantages of fishing with a guide.

Become familiar with the hatch stages where I am fishing and what patterns works best during a particular time of day and month.

Learn to read the water, as to where the different species of trout hold

Since most of the feeding by trout is down under, learn to fish the nymph pattern better

Learn how to use the streamer more effectively in fast water verses slow water

Recognize hot spots and never forget where they are on a particular stream you might be fishing

And last—realize that a guided fishing trip for me is not all about landing a lot of trout, but more of a learning experience—in other words think of the outing as a day spent in an outdoor classroom.
Feel free to list your own advantages