I guided fishing for 20+ years.
Some of that was part time after I had left guiding full time and went back to work with a corporate career, but I spent a lot of time rowing boats and wading rivers.
When you become a guide, it will take you a long time to develop a repeat clientele that won‘t make you want to pull you hair out. Also, when you first start guiding, the outfitter you work for will give you all the sports that are ”walk-ins”, beginners, people he can tell will be difficult, or sports that all his other guides won’t take or can’t take because they’ve been booked with their return clients for sometimes years in advance. Essentially, you will be guiding people the outfitter views as potentially just one time customers.
Every once in a while you’ll get some OK sports, but mostly these people are going to make you question why you’re doing the job. Even though you’ve got the skill set to put people on fish or animals, when you first start out - you’re going to be learning as much about how to guide and deal with people as your sports are going to learn from you.
IF (and it’s a big if), you decide that guiding is still something you want to pursue after a year or so, you’re going to need to accept that to get to a point where you‘re taking out more skilled and capable people and consistently getting trips, you‘re going to be paying your dues for several more years. And, despite the fact that you’re going to be frustrated with how awful some of your clients are, you’ve still got to bust your ass for these people because the outfitter won’t give you better clients until you’ve proven yourself capable of taking out guys who actually know what they‘re doing (and a lot of these guys have been guided by some very capable people and had some world class experiences). You’re going to be the low man on the totem pole, and trying to out work/compete all the other new guides in an effort to get better sports.
I could tell you a lot more about why guiding can suck, but if it‘s something you‘re still interested in doing even after reading all the comments from guys who have posted in this thread, give it a shot. However, if I were to give you any advice - it would be to let your fiancé determine where to live because she’s the one who has been going to school for her career. And, I think it would be wise to get a job in the trades so that you‘re learning a skill and can be working when you‘re not guiding because the reality is, if you start guiding - you could go days or more between trips.