Members,

We are all affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.  Many clients have cancelled trips with fishing guides as far out as September 2020.  The economic impact will be hard for fishing guides and charters throughout Washington State.

If you are still operating, take every precaution to protect yourself and your clients. Be more diligent in keeping everything clean. The CDC has stated the virus is thought to spread mainly from person-to-person. Mainly between people who are in close contact with one another (within about 6 feet) through respiratory droplets produced when an infected person coughs or sneezes.  These droplets can land in the mouths or noses of people who are nearby or possibly be inhaled into the lungs.  Apparently, the virus can be viable on a hard surface for up to 3 hours.

As fishing guides are constantly using saliva to wet knots and more, it is important you try not to do this. 

For those of you who are on the drug testing program through our partner NACO.  They want some information from you ASAP.  If you know guides who are not members, share this with them as well.   

From NACO;

Disaster Relief effort – We need everyone of our members and non-members to submit to us the amount of lost profits that each of you have experienced so far due to cancellations by customers in reaction to the Corona-virus. Whatever your loss small or large, please submit that to us via email so we can take this before congress in an effort to receive some relief for you as well as our industry as a whole.

The following was sent out this week and we are receiving responses – just not as many as we know should be coming in.

“To help us in this effort we need help from you. If you have been affected by cancellations, direct loss of trips, or in any other way adverse to your business that cause a lack of income we need to know what that impact is. We do not need to know personal information and should we receive any we will not disclose it to anyone. 

We are looking for a number of charter trips lost due to the virus issue, the total cost or each trip lost, the expenses for each trip, and a figure for lost profit from each trip. An example is a full day charter may cost the client $1,000.00, your expenses may be as high $500.00, so your profit would be $500.00. You would need financial assistance as close to the lost $500.00 you can get. 

We are looking for a total number of trips impacted, the area (west coast, Alaska, Great Lakes, Hawaii, east coast, Gulf of Mexico), you can include your state affected. We need this info ASAP. Please email the info to info@nacocharters.org.

While some of you have seen no negative impact yet, it may come so we suggest you be prepared and keep a good record of any loses. Those who have been impacted please provide your info ASAP. We will be sending Congress a request for help within the next day or so and will follow up that request with the numbers of loses we are able to calculate based on your responses.”

We will be putting numbers before Congress this week & we will be keeping y’all up to date.

Thanks for your help on this issue.