Idaho does the whole "guide thing" a lot different than other states. First of all, you have to have a permit to be a "guide". Each river has only so many permits. These are bought and sold for large sums of money. As most "guiding" in this state is whitewater rafting type of stuff, the "guides" have to be certified. This involves X number of hours on the river with what is called a "master" boatman. This person has the ability to "sign you off".. This is a good thing as not just any yahoo can get in a boat and proclaim "guiding" is my profession. I do not know how Washington does things but I know that in Oregon, anybody can be a "guide" by simply proclaiming themselves as such. For example. In Idaho a "guide" may have a permit to run the Salmon river and nowhere else. But the same "guide" can also run trips on the Owhyee river in Oregon simply because they do not need a permit to do so.

It gets more complicated than that. You also need a permit to float many rivers as a privet party. Example, the middle fork of the Salmon river. They allow 3-4 launches a day for privet partys. There can be up to 24 persons in each party. Then, they allow so many comercial outfitters "or guides" to launch. What does this accomplish??? Well, every Tom and Dick can not show up and float so you are ensured a certain amount of solitude. Keep in mind that this particular float is 4-7 days long. So who gets the permits???? Well, thats done by a drawing just like a controlled hunt. You pick a day and put in for it. Lets use the Salmon again as an example. You have less than a 1 in 25 chance of drawing. Keep in mind that you are putting in for a certain day only. You get one shot at it. So many launches are set aside for out of state boaters. One river, the Selway, has only one launch a day. Talk about restrictions !!!! But there is a reason for this.. It keeps the river corridors clean and un-crowded. So whats any of this got to do with fishing???

A fishing guide has the same restrictions as a whitewater guide. He will have a permit to fish a section of a river. The number of permits never increases. He bought that permit and it could have cost him upwards of 100,000 dollars. Its his full time job, not a side thing he does to make extra cash. Most have several guides that work for them. However, during steelhead season there is no restictions on launch dates. For example, The Hells canyon section of the Snake river is a permit only float from June through August, Sept 1 anyone can get on it. Same with the Salmon river. The Clearwater river has no permit system for privet boaters, but does have only so many fishing guides because of the limited outfitter permits I explained.

I think this is a good thing. It keeps dorks from taking peoples money. The guides that are out there are well established, and I'm not saying none of them are dorks because some are, but they have a lot of money invested and that tends to keep them on the level. None of this here today gone tommorrow crap.