Jeremy:
Please don't assume the guide is at fault. I suspect I know which shop the OP used, and their policies are a bit strange. The thing to remember is that it is the outfitter or shop that books the trip that sets the policies. Guides can't work for themselves in Montana; you have to be an outfitter, and to become an outfitter you need several hundred days working as a guide. Most guides here are independent contractors working for several outfitters/shops but who can't advertise their own services (I am a single-outfitter guide). Basically, most ICs are scrambling to get on an outfitter's call list. A guide who doesn't do what the outfitter tells him won't be getting any more calls. So it's sort of a rock and a hard place. You need the customer to be happy but also the outfitter or shop to be happy too. If the OP used the shop I'm thinking of, they operate as a booking agent for an outside outfitter rather than having their own outfitter's license, so virtually all their money comes from fly/terminal tackle sales, hence the nickel & diming.
Edit:
Reread the OP and maybe he went with an outfitter-guide rather than someone through a shop. If so, everything above no longer applies. Leaving it up for explanatory purposes.
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