We had a group of five of us, and all but one had been on similar party boats previously. While we went in late March (more undersized fish than later in the season), I’ve still never seen so many undersized fish caught for getting so few keepers (photo shows our catch in a 48-quart cooler for reference/scale). But that’s part of the experience…sometimes you get a bunch, and sometimes you don’t. This doesn’t reflect on my review here.

What DOES affect my review are the behavior of one of the crew members, the way the fish were filleted, the fact that we found a USED BANDAID in our bag of fillets upon getting ready to cook it up that evening, and especially the fact that although we mentioned the nasty bandaid in our Google review, the reply from Pelican Adventures didn’t even mention this.

Our deck hand (went by the name of ‘Retro’) was a very energetic type, constantly moving/doing. And while this is a good thing when you’re catching fish, it also included his mouth. Even on the way out, he was constantly yelling things or making loud sounds…rarely a break, which was fine at first but got more and more irritating as the day went on. Like I said, when you’re catching fish and the deck hands are trying to let everyone else know what’s being caught, the yelling is understood (and even expected). But in between, you kinda like to be able to think and enjoy the waves and ocean. Not so much for us.

Retro also ‘tried’ to help us with filleting our fish after the trip, but also obviously had little experience in how to fillet, or was in such a rush that he was making a mess of it. After he cut the side of one small fish into three silver dollar sized pieces as he was trying to remove the fillet from the skin (instead of a solid fillet), Captain Mike stepped in and started filleting them as well. Granted, we about a dozen small fish between five people; so there wasn’t much meat to spare! If we had known the crew was going to butcher our fish in the filleting process, we most definitely would NOT have had them fillet them for us. But you kind of expect that the crew of a FISHING boat would be experienced in doing this well. Live and learn…do it yourself.

The absolute worst, though, was finally getting back to our kitchen to cook this small amount of fish up, and finding a USED BANDAID from Retro/Captain Mike’s finger stuck in with the fish fillets. I had been willing to chalk it all up to a less-than-ideal experience until then. That was just too much. So I wrote a quick review on Google regarding a lackluster day of keepers (but still a decent day all told), and highlighting the bandaid in our bag of fillets. I didn’t even mention the deck hand’s loud nature. The reply from Pelican Adventures addressed the fact that they can’t guarantee the amount of keeper fish you will catch (which we knew). But it made no mention of this nasty used bandaid floating around in our fish fillets!! if it had been in a bag of unfilleted fish, it would not have bee as big a deal. But this is contamination right up against the exposed fish meat. Several of our party didn’t even eat the cooked fish because of this; and it really put a damper on the end of what was otherwise a so-so trip.

If you don’t mind someone yelling and screaming for no reason and can fillet your own fish, give them a try. But if you want a chance to enjoy the sea and expect to leave with nice fillets, you might want to look elsewhere. Sorry if this review sounds negative, but when the used bandaid issue went unaddressed in my first review, that really said a lot about their interest in customer service. You got my money…once.

Been on several fishing trips and this was the worst one ever. We only fished for 1hr and 26 minutes in a 7 hour trip. Will not go back with this company if they paid me a lot of driving around. Talked to a lot of people on the boat and they felt the same. We drove 3 miles one time horn blew and I times 2 minutes and 48 seconds line was in the water than we mover again. Crew was respectful and helpful but felt like they could’ve done more.