Happy New Year!

Wanted to wish everyone a happy, safe and prosperous new year. Hope everything went well for you in 2010 and that 2011 will be even better.
We had our best year ever at the fly shop. Our sales were up in the shop and our guide service had its best year ever. Despite having 4 guides on the payroll, we still had to turn some people away last year that we just couldn't find an opening for. We hate to do that, but sometimes we are just completely booked up. We do refer these clients to other services that also have good guides. We know that they will also do a good job for the customers. I guess that being completely booked up is a good problem to have, but we still hate to not be able to fish with these people.
In 2011 we are going to bring more product lines into the shop. We are definitely adding Simms to the line-up. We are also going to add a new line of reels, we just don't know what company yet, probably Hatch or Lamson. I'm leaning towards Hatch, but we are not sure yet. We still have a little time to decide, so we'll see how it goes.
We are also going to change a few things on the guide service end as well. We hope to add some new destinations to our list of waters that we guide on. We also REALLY need to add at least 1 more guide to the list to help out this year. I know without a doubt that this year is going to be busier than last year. We are going to need more help, that's for sure. But at this point, I have no idea who we will hire. This is a tough decision. A guide has alot of responsibilities when it comes to customer service. Being a good fisherman is a very small part of the whole picture. There are many other factors when it comes to being a good guide. That's what makes it so hard to find someone that you trust well enough to put them with clients. Especially when you don't have the time to train them. That's why we tend to pull guides from other services to help out when they are not booked at their "Home" service. We also help other services by guiding for them when they need help at a time when we are not booked. It is a common problem for guide services to be short handed, especially during the busy season or when you have a corporate booking that requires several guides in order to fish alot of people on the same day.
So this will be a challenging year to say the least, but I hope all goes well again this year. For everyone!