How To Plan Your First Trip to a Fly Fishing Lodge

This week on MidCurrent, Phil Monahan — who in addition to having been the editor of American Angler for ten years has also been an Alaskan lodge guide — offers excellent advice on how to plan for your first trip to a fly fishing lodge or destination.
Excerpt:

• For any destination that involves fly-outs, choose a lodge that has home water. That way you can still fish when the weather is too nasty for flying.
  Fly fishermen should choose lodges that cater to them, rather than to conventional anglers.
• Is there a fly shop on the premises? (This is particularly important if you don’t plan to bring flies or aren’t sure what to bring.) Do they fish in fly-fishing-only waters? Are their guides accomplished fly fishermen?
• Does the lodge specialize in a particular species? Some rivers don’t get runs of all kinds of salmon and some flats see few permit.