If a bad day fishing is better than a good day at work, Richard Simms has landed himself a pretty great way to make a living.
“I’ve built quite the thriving business,” says Simms, whose team at Scenic City Fishing Charters led about 450 trips last year. “When I was growing up in Chattanooga, the river was basically considered an obstacle to try to figure out how to get across. Now it just excites me no end to see how people have come to think of the Tennessee River as the tremendous natural resource it is.”
Simms was never interested in working at a desk, and after snagging a degree in wildlife management from Tennessee Technological University, he spent the first nine years of his career with the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency. He worked as a game warden in Marion County, and then as a photographer based in the Nashville office, but eventually made his way back home to Chattanooga to work for NewsChannel 9 as a photographer and digital editor.
In 2006, Simms started his fishing guide business, working weekends on the water and spending Monday through Friday at his day job.
“It didn’t take long for me to realize that niche was definitely there,” he says. “I did it on a part-time basis for a lot of years, but in 2014 I decided I was ready to start guiding full time, and I met other people who were avid, excellent fisherpersons and slowly but surely just started adding on guides.”