Great crew, great boat, great fishing! Thank you guys for a great time and a great catch!

The advertised boat said “all fishing equipment would be provided.”  I was surprised when the captain said we would need live bait and then I had to shell out another $20 for that.  The boat has no outriggers, so we were limited to trolling with only 4 lines in the water maximum.  We had 7 people on the boat; 4 adults and 3 children.  Yes, the boat is kid friendly, and crew were great.  Everyone had a good time, but it was not up to my expectations.

Had great trip,6 people everyone caught fish first mate Nick was informative and on the spot to make sure we were catching fish. Captian put us on fish and let us there which was tough do to tropical storm development out in the gulf. Great trip

It may be a common experience to lose 80% of your catch to dolphins, but I was not ready for it, and I wonder if some of it might have been prevented.

Let me say this up front, our deck guy was fantastic, a 5 stars out of 5 rating, but I am not as fired up about the captain.

We started out doing well with a couple of quick hits with one fished boated, and another spooling us (another ding on the captain).  I heard the captain call another boat to see how they were doing and they reported they had a dolphin working them.  Shortly after this, we had another fish on and the other boat came sliding by us fairly close.  Suddenly, we had the dolphin.  Our deck hand said the other captain dumped it on us (they reported a good day after this incident.)  The deck hand pointed this out to our captain an suggest he return the favor.  Instead for the next hour every thing we got on the line was taken by a dolphin.  The captain did try to move to another location finally, but after cruising there for over an hour, we had zero action.

At one point the captain did come down and said that most of their job seemed to be explaining how dolphins are not the cute, cuddly animals seen on TV.  Later, after we went back to the dock, he explained with a shrug that if you get rid of a dolphin that is working you, you just run into another one that starts all over again.

In the end, each fish caught cost over $350.

I thought long and hard about what I wanted to say in a review and the bottom line is this…I would not hesitate to work with the deck hand again as I think he did his absolute best under the circumstances.  However, I have to work for my money, and I feel that Capt. Shrug just went through the motions to get his paycheck on this trip.  Logically, if everyone lost their catch to dolphins or sharks or whatever at this rate, there would be no one bothering to fish in Destin.