My grandfather started taking me fishing as soon as I was old enough to walk. By the time I was in grade school, when asked what I wanted to do when I grew up, my response would be “Become a fisherman” – every single time.
I was born in Belgrade, Serbia, but spent most of my childhood in Canada. The fishing there was OK, mostly catching small-to-medium-sized Pike, Musky, and Smallmouth Bass on lures.
Heart Lake in Brampton, Ontario. (Mykola Swarnyk, Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 4.0)
The first time I had a real adrenaline rush was when my neighbor who had a beach house next to mine brought back two blue sharks. I was 8 years old and fascinated by having the opportunity to stand next to a real, live shark.
At 19, I rented a diving boat on the coral-abundant Red Sea in Egypt and set out to do some reef fishing. After surfacing over 7 colorful species in under 2 hours, I realized this was much more exciting than fishing my local waters.
Soon after, I was lucky enough to travel to Mauritius, bringing only two light spinning rods and paying a local fisherman to take me with on his wooden boat, every day for a week. We caught many fish, but could not get anything bigger than 3kgs up to the boat because the fish would snap my thin braided line. There were trips to Singapore and Malaysia that followed.
Fast forward. After graduating Software Engineering in 2012, I was ready to start my own business. I wanted to connect my childhood dream of fishing to what I learned at university – building great websites. I spent hundreds of hours brainstorming how I could help fishermen around the world and refining the idea of starting FishingBooker.
One day, I typed “fishing in the Maldives” into Google. Dozens of charters appeared, but not a single site to tell me which ones were good, where to find them and how to book easily. I tried the same for “fishing in Spain”, “fishing in Florida” and every time, I got the same result. I decided to build such a website: A place where you could easily find, compare, read reviews, and book charters online for any location in the world, just like you can with hotels and plane tickets.
The first version of FishingBooker was for the Maldives, but soon after, I discovered there was not enough interest for that region and swapped the Maldives for Tampa Bay, Florida, also called “Fishing Capital of the World” by some. The response from my first clients was immediate and a good enough signal to start seriously working on FishingBooker.
Find & Book Amazing Fishing Trips
Our current mission: Help people discover, compare and book the best fishing charter deals worldwide. The site was released on Tuesday, July 2nd, 2013. I can’t wait to help all of you fishing enthusiasts embark on the fishing trip of your life.
