By Kirk Deeter, Donovan Webster, Bob Butz | Dec 09/Jan 10 | Features

Best of the Sporting South

Whether you’re looking for a top redfish guide or a world-class bird lodge, opportunities abound. Here’s a cheat sheet for the hottest action 

Guiding Lights

A good fishing guide can make a bad day good and a good day great. Here are seven you should plan on sharing a boat with 

Fishing guides do more than run (or row) boats and help people catch fish. Work in this business long enough and you eventually become part philosopher, coach, psychologist, meteorologist, and naturalist (among other trades). The greatest guides, of course, are also master storytellers, and some who spin the best yarns can be found throughout the South. If you’re interested in hitting the water, shooting the breeze, and catching plenty of fish in the process, consider hooking up with these folks. From the mountain streams to the salty flats, they’re the best at doing the job we all wish we had.

Brandon Shuler
Port Mansfield, Texas

At over 550 square miles with an average water depth of two feet, there is perhaps no truer proving ground for the sight-casting angler than the Laguna Madre in Texas. You’d be hard-pressed to find someone with deeper experience than Brandon Shuler.

“I grew up down here and have probably waded the whole bay barefooted,” he says. “Things change with the weather, but I’m pretty sure I know every channel where the redfish like to hide.”
But don’t expect the fishing to be easy; you need casting skills to handle the Texas breezes, especially with a fly rod. “I’m not a hand-holder,” Shuler admits. “I just can’t pole you around and watch you miss fish after fish after fish.”

Depending on the time of year, anglers can chase anything from sea trout to flounder inshore, and kingfish and tuna in the deeper waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Best of all is Texas’s fall tarpon fishery, perhaps the most underrated in the world. Shuler says when he fishes along the Gulf beach “outside” the flats, a typical day might include landing five or six silver kings and jumping another half dozen. Even the most decorated Florida Keys tarpon guide would call those numbers “epic” in any season. (getawayadventureslodge.com/brandon.htm)

Tommy and Chris Robinson
Apalachicola, Florida

If you’re looking for high-rises, T-shirt shops, and bikini bars, you won’t find them in Apalachicola. What you will find is an old-South fishing culture grafted to a vast expanse of flats where migrating tarpon collect in midsummer. This is the place where many fishing guides and serious anglers from all points of the country gravitate to when the silver kings are on the feed.

The lucky ones get to fish with guides Tommy and Chris Robinson. Tommy, now in his late forties, has been a flats guide since he turned eighteen. His younger brother Chris has been in the business for sixteen years.

“I’ve been doing it long enough now that the guiding just comes naturally,” says Chris. “It’s fun to guide here; the fishery is healthy. And it’s great to share information with Tommy; it’s how we stay in tune with an environment that’s constantly changing.”

“It keeps me on my toes having a younger brother who I think is the best fishing guide in the country,” Tommy explains. “We fish hard. We work hard. And competing with Chris for the attention of clients keeps me pushing the extra mile. In the end, we don’t judge success by the number of fish we catch, but the number of people who come back and fish with us next year.” (floridaredfish.com)

Clint Wilkinson
Gassville, Arkansas

Anyone who wants to take up fly fishing for trout should consider a trip to the Ozark Mountains in Arkansas. When the conditions are right—and they usually are in the fall—this is the place where you can reasonably expect to catch twenty fish or more in a day. With that much action going on, people tend to climb the learning curve through casting and landing fish pretty quickly.

But if you’d like to learn from the best, it’s worth hiring guide Clint Wilkinson. He has been fishing this region for more than twenty years and is known as a patient, deliberate instructor.

“My number-one priority before I set out on the day is to talk about the things someone wants to learn and experience,” Wilkinson says. “I like fishing with beginners around here because we have high numbers of rainbow trout that can be pretty easy to catch, even with lesser skill levels.”

Of course, for more advanced anglers, fishing downstream from the Bull Shoals Dam on the White River, and on the North Fork River with heavy streamer flies, has produced world-record brown trout. Wilkinson’s personal best is a thirty-two-inch seventeen-pound brown. (whiteriver-flyfishing.com)

Greg Davis
Savannah, Georgia

Captain Greg Davis grew up on the Georgia coast and became one of Savannah’s first full-time inshore fishing guides in 1995. He says the local fishery is one of the most underrated in the country.

“Savannah has always had huge appeal for tourists, and there’s more than enough to do in a week here,” Davis says. “But there’s even more to realize when it comes to the caliber of fishing we have. You don’t have to be a purist to appreciate it; there’s always something going on.”

In the fall, specifically, that means chasing striped bass in the old rice canals along the Savannah River. A nine-foot tide makes the Savannah estuary fertile with baitfish, enough so that the river’s bass population does not migrate far out to sea.

“Our stripers are eating machines,” Davis says. “They don’t migrate. And when you fish the river, you aren’t as affected by wind and waves. It’s a one-of-a-kind striped-bass experience.” (fishsav.com)

Gregg Arnold
New Orleans, Louisiana

If you want to catch a really big “bull” redfish (meaning thirty-plus pounds) on a fly, you need to talk to Captain Gregg Arnold. He finds the fish in an area of the Bayou Biloxi Marsh near Hopedale, Louisiana, he’s nicknamed the Land of Giants.

His string of International Game Fish Association records is the only thing longer than the fish he catches. For example, he guided Conway Bowman to the 20-pound line class world record for a fly-caught redfish; the fish weighed a staggering 41.10 pounds. In the past season, he reports having landed three redfish over 50 pounds, five redfish over 40 pounds, fifty-three redfish over 30 pounds, and more than three hundred others that tipped the scales at over 20 pounds. In addition, Arnold has made a side enterprise out of chasing large black drum; he guided Tom Stevenson to a 56-pound fly-caught Louisiana state record in 2006.

Arnold is about as laid-back a fishing guide as you’ll ever find, with a sharp wit and demeanor fitting the Big Easy. But when he’s on the hunt for trophy fish (his main season is October through February), it’s all business.

“I gauge the quality of a day’s fishing not by the inches of the fish we catch, but in pounds,” he explains. “When I boat six to eight fish that add up to two hundred pounds or more in a single day of redfishing, son, let me tell you…I know I’m on them.” (fishinthelandofgiants.com)

Sarah Gardner & Brian Horsley
Nags Head, North Carolina

Fly-fishing legend Lefty Kreh took Sarah Gardner under his wing a number of years ago when she was a blossoming outdoor writer and angler. Today, she’s applied Kreh’s insights (and those of her husband, Brian Horsley) to become one of the best-known fly guides in the country.

Home base for Gardner and Horsley is Pamlico Sound, where they fish for redfish, cobia, jacks, sea trout, and sharks, all on the fly. In October, Gardner and Horsley shift their focus farther down the Outer Banks, to Cape Lookout, where they chase albacore and king mackerel on the fly as these fish migrate offshore. Horsley grew up in this region, has fished here for nearly forty years, and admits that he and the Mrs. have contrasting styles on the water.

“We communicate on our way to the dock in the morning, and commiserate at the end of the day, but we don’t fish together,” Horsley explains. “Once we get out on the water, we tend to go in different directions.

“Sarah is a teacher by nature, and a great casting instructor. As for me, I tend to focus on pushing the limits with longtime clients. I’m not afraid to try new things. If I’m going to go down in a ball of flames, I’m going to be trying to catch something big.” (outerbanksflyfishing.com)

Rob Fightmaster
Maryville, Tennessee

With a name that’s perfectly suited for his trade, Rob Fightmaster is a go-to guide for exploring the intricate lattice of streams in the Great Smoky Mountain region of eastern Tennessee. The area has over a thousand miles of wild and fishable rivers. Here, the game isn’t always about chasing whoppers, rather matching wits with native fish. Brook trout are indigenous to the region, while the resident rainbows and brown trout haven’t been planted in these waters for over thirty years.

“I try to be as service-minded as I can when I take people out on the water, and make the day revolve around what they want to accomplish,” Fightmaster says. “Some people want to be taught, while others want to just catch fish.”

Fall and early spring are the best seasons for chasing trout in the Smokies, as the heat subsides, and the fish become more active. Any angler who catches anything over twelve inches long on most trout streams in Tennessee has something to be proud of. But the region does have two tailwater rivers—the Clinch and the Holston—that hold good populations of big browns. The Tennessee state record brown (28½ pounds) was hooked in the Clinch. (fightmasterflyfishing.com)