This episode is a how-to guide that answers the question I get asked more than any other — how do you quit your job and become a professional fisherman? The answer is simpler and harder than most people want to hear. I am not going to tell you about networking strategies or business plans or five-year roadmaps. I am going to tell you what actually worked for me and for every other person I know who made it happen in this industry.
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You make the decision, go to where the work is, and commit fully. Walk the docks where charter boats operate. Talk to captains. Tell them you want to work. When they say no, stick around anyway. Work for free. Clean fish. Scrub boats. Sleep in your car if you have to. When someone does not show up one day, you will be there, and you will get your shot. Then you work harder than anyone has ever worked on that boat and make yourself indispensable.
Tom did not grow up in the Keys. His father was not a professional fisherman. He did not know anyone in the industry. He slept in cars, scrubbed toilets, worked eighteen-hour days, cleaned boats, hung around fly shops until they wanted to kick him out, worked for free as a camp cook, washed dishes, built fences, taught fly casting for free, and lived in a commune with twenty other people. He did all of it with a smile because he was committed to making it happen.
There is no fixed timeline. It depends entirely on your commitment and willingness to do whatever it takes. It will take longer than you think and be harder than you expect. The timeline is determined by how badly you want it and how much work you are willing to put in with no guarantee of immediate success.
No. Tom had no contacts, no family in the industry, and no experience when he started. What matters is the commitment to making it happen and doing all the work involved. The fact that you do not know anyone doing what you want to do does not matter. Commitment and work ethic matter more than connections.
Tom was working a summer job in Yellowstone National Park. He walked to the Yellowstone River with an eight-and-a-half-foot Orvis fly rod he did not know how to use. He saw a nineteen-and-a-quarter-inch Yellowstone cutthroat trout holding in the current in water so clear he thought the fish was floating above it. After two hours of trying, he caught that fish, and in that moment he experienced an inner peace he had never felt before. He knew then that he would be a fisherman forever.
I get some form of this question at least once per week. How can I quit my job and do what you do? How do I open a retail shop? How do I become a fishing guide or a hunting guide? I have been asked this question so many times that I finally wrote an article about it on saltwaterexperience.com, and that article has been read thousands of times.
The reason I keep answering it is because I reached a tipping point years ago. The tipping point — and that comes from Malcolm Gladwell's book with the same title — is when things just change and tip in the direction of success. For me, the tipping point was the moment when people in the outside world quit asking me when I was going to get a real job and started asking me how they could do what I do.
I think if you just continue to do what you love long enough, people figure out that you are doing okay. Maybe it was the infectious positive attitude or the fourteen-hour days I never complained about or that I was always doing fourteen-hour days for months at a time, and on the one day I had off I might have done an eighteen-hour day for my own enjoyment. Behavior like this is so contrary to the nine-to-five punch-the-clock mentality that is so prevalent in our society that people eventually just assume you must be onto something.
The email that started this whole episode came from a guy named Robert. He was 42 years old, had worked ten years for a company, was never really happy because he was not doing what he loved, and wanted to know how to get started working on a charter boat. That is the question I answer in this episode, and the answer applies whether you want to be a flats guide, an offshore guide, a tugboat captain, a trout fishing guide, an elk guide, a professional bow hunter, or anything else.
I did virtually everything wrong that can be done wrong when I got started. My father was not a professional fisherman or a guide. I did not grow up in the Keys or near the ocean. I did not know anyone who had ever been a professional guide. I had only taken a couple of guided trips in my lifetime, and those were from guides I had no desire to emulate.
I just started fishing, and I loved it. When I say I loved it, I mean it. Fishing became everything to me. When I was fishing, I had complete tunnel vision and laser focus. I was able to learn at a rate I never knew in school. For the first time ever, I had a passion, an unrelenting desire to gain as much knowledge and experience as possible in the shortest amount of time. This was new to me. High school was tough. I had no idea what I wanted to do and even less of a desire to figure it out. College was probably even worse.
Then I took a risk and applied for a job in Yellowstone National Park for a summer. I got the job and found myself packing for a summer in a place I had never been. One thing that made it into the backpack was an eight-and-a-half-foot, four-piece, six-weight Western series Orvis fly rod. It was cool. I had no idea how to use it.
Once there, I found my way to the Yellowstone River and managed somehow to tie a fly onto a leader. Having no idea what I was doing, I walked down the bank of the river and looked into the water. Floating two feet above the water was the most beautiful fish I had ever seen. It was a Yellowstone cutthroat trout, and it was precisely nineteen and a quarter inches long.
I stared at the fish and tried to understand how and why it was floating above the water, and then it hit me. Far from the muddy waters of Tennessee, I was just beginning to understand the beauty of the Rocky Mountains. The fish was not floating above the water. I had just never seen water that clear. It was as if there was no water at all. Confused, I started to put things together — the bottom, the fish, the surface of the water — and all of it began to align correctly. I realized the fish was holding in the current about a foot below the surface.
Somehow I managed to get my fly upstream of this fish and watched as he would not eat it because it was dragging unnaturally. I tried for about two hours until I changed flies, moved, and was finally able to get the right drift. As Yellowstone cutthroats do, he tilted towards the surface and began to slowly rise towards the fly. This fish knew something was not right, and he drifted onto the fly for a foot or so before he actually opened his mouth and ate it.
Miraculously, I set the hook, and I caught that fish. When I landed the trout, I experienced an inner peace that I had never had before. He slipped out of my hands back into the river, and at that moment, I knew that I would be a fisherman forever.
Once I decided that I was going to be a fisherman at that moment on the Yellowstone River, I was committed. So committed, in fact, that I probably should have been committed. Nothing was going to stop me. Nothing.
I was willing to sleep in a car, scrub toilets, travel, work eighteen-hour days, make a fool out of myself, ask stupid questions, clean boats, hang around fly shops until they wanted to kick me out, work for free, be a camp cook, wash dishes, build fences, change bearings on trailers, take boatloads of firewood down class-two whitewater, fix cars, teach fly casting for free, live in a commune with twenty other people, and many, many other things to make it happen. I did all of those things with a giant smile on my face.
I looked for help to try to make my dream become a reality, and I am sure that people gave me some great advice and probably some great contacts, but they just did not make sense to me at the time. The fact is that my story of how I was able to become a professional guide is the same as others I know that did it and continue to do it well.
You want the secret? Here it is. First, determine what you want. You say you want to work on a charter boat. Others say they want to be a flats guide, an offshore guide, a tugboat captain, a trout fishing guide, an elk guide, a professional bow hunter, you name it. The method is all the same.
Just do it. That is it. Just go out there and do it.
If you are not happy with your job, your life, your situation, change it. You want to work on a charter boat? Go to where there are charter boats. Walk the docks. Talk to the captains and tell them that you want to work for them. They will not hire you? Well, of course they will not. You just showed up. Stick around and take their shit until they do, and you will be tested because they will dish out a lot of shit.
Work for free. Clean fish. Scrub toilets. Sleep in your car. Live in your car. One day, someone will not show up, and you will be in. Then you better work your ass off and make sure that your customers are happy. Make sure that boat is spotless, and then clean it again. Be the best mate that has ever been on that boat, on that dock, in that town, in that state, in the United States. Be the best mate that has ever been in the world.
I cannot tell you how long this is going to take or if that first dock will be the right place. But if you are committed, it will happen for you. Make your decision and do it.
The fact that you do not know anyone that is doing what you want, the fact that you do not have any contacts, the fact that you do not have any experience — it does not matter. What does matter is the commitment to making it happen and then doing all the work that is involved.
It is going to take longer than you think, and it is going to be harder than you think. But I can promise you this: if you make that commitment, it will be worth it.
I have watched many, many people make entrance into the professional fishing world and into many other types of opportunities that seem impossible. The ones who made it were the ones who committed fully and did not stop when it got hard. They did not stop when people told them it was impossible. They did not stop when they had to sleep in their car or work for free or scrub toilets. They kept going because they had made the decision and they were committed.
That is the difference between the people who make it and the people who do not. It is not talent. It is not contacts. It is not money. It is commitment.
In my opinion, being happy, hungry, and doing what you want is better than being safe, fat, and unhappy. That is my advice. Take it or leave it.
I do not know if that is good advice for everyone. It is advice that comes from my own experience and from watching many others make it happen in this industry and in other industries where the path is not clear and the guarantees do not exist. The commitment is everything. The work is everything. The willingness to do what others will not do is everything.
If you are thinking about making a change, make the decision and go do it. Press play in the YouTube player at the top of this page and listen to the full story.
This is a How 2 Tuesday episode in which Tom Rowland answers one of the most common questions he receives — how to quit your job and become a professional fisherman. Tom shares the story of how he got started in the industry with no contacts, no family in the business, and no experience, and gives the only advice that actually works: make the decision, go where the work is, and commit fully to doing whatever it takes.
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