Some problems with experience.  Captain was 10 minutes late, had to get gas & bait, trolling motor didn’t work and redfish poles were not rigged and only 2 poles for 3 fisherman.  These issues need to be fixed.

The Captain, however, did put us on the fish.  We each caught 2 huge bull redfish each.  They all exceeded 30” long.  Captain had good sense of humor.  Good overall trip after getting through the issues above.

We booked a five hour morning fishing trip with Taylor (7am-Noon).  He was a very personable captain and appeared to know what he was doing.  What bothered us is he was late to pick us up from the pier.  Then he needed to make a stop to get some gas, so we started the trip late, which I assumed he would just extend the finish time to correspond with when we got started.  He didn’t.  We fished for bait which my boys thought was fun.  Once we collected enough, we headed out to do some offshore fishing.  Although boats were zooming past us, Taylor didn’t seem to be in much of a hurry.  Once we arrived to the spot, the current was too strong and we didn’t have a lot of luck.  My son did catch a small lane snapper that we were able to keep, which was the highlight of the trip.  It obviously wasn’t the captain’s fault that the seas were too rough.  We then headed inland to do some more fishing — again Taylor didn’t appear to be in much of a hurry.  Once we arrived near shore he headed to Crab Island.  We just thought he was going past there for our next fishing spot, but he then turned around and headed to the harbor and told us he thought we would like to see it.  That wasted a lot of our time.  We then headed into the harbor for the last of our time and we caught another small fish that we were able to keep.  He was very quick to stop fishing so he could unload us at noon. He then filleted our fish and told us of a restaurant nearby that would cook it for us.  Only 10 ounces of fish ended up able to be cooked.  Unfortunately, we paid for meat that was full of bones and barely edible.  Not sure what happened when he was cleaning them, but he obviously didn’t know what he was doing.  We certainly enjoyed our time together as a family, but for the $700+ we paid, we were extremely disappointed.  I am well aware that the captain cannot guarantee that we will catch a lot of fish — I’m not upset about that.  I’m upset that we spent so much time on what felt like was a leisure boat ride.

Although we were put on some fish the captain was 30 minutes late picking us up from the dock and then while in the middle of the trip he decided to cut the trip short to a 4 hr trip. He did reduce his cost but we were still catching fish and expected a 6 hr trip.

The charter was for five hours from 1 o’clock to 6 o’clock on June 6, 2022. If you check the weather conditions they were terrible and unsafe. We were about 2 miles offshore and there was a terrible thunderstorm sitting right over Destin coming out to sea. We were on a 26 foot center console boats with nowhere to hide. We were hit with hail, 7 to 10 foot swells and frequent lightning strikes nearby. The wind gust were reported by the weather channel to be between 40 and 50 miles an hour. The captain would not call the trip. He told us he would stay out there as long as we were willing. The captain kept saying “I can do this all day”. With the pitch of the boat and getting hailed on there’s no way we could land a fish safely. A couple of our party began getting nervous about the lightning strikes and told the captain they thought it was unsafe and wanted to go in. The captain immediately turned around and went back to the port. He said “y’all lasted about an hour longer than I thought you would’ve”. We were pretty much the last ones in. We were only out about 2 1/2 hours and there is only about an hour and a half of fishable conditions. He refused to give any discount stating, “you were the ones that called it. I didn’t. I could’ve stayed out there all day.” The guy obviously has poor judgment and cared more about getting his fees than the safety of the people he was in charge of. On their website it talks about the captain calling the trip off and you get a return of your fees. Apparently if it’s unsafe and the people finally freak out and wanna go back, you don’t get your money back. So we paid $800 for about an hour and a half of fishable conditions.

I’ve gone on at least 30 paid fishing trips out to sea. This is the first time a captain did not bother to help you unhook the fish. And the captain kept exclaiming that “the tuna were running heavy” in this area. When our first catch was being reeled in he started hooting and hollering about “we got our first tuna”. It was about a 12 inch bonito. All of us kind of looked at each other on a boat like what in the heck is he talking about. Then we caught our second and last fish of the trip which was another bonito and he still was saying we were catching tuna. It was like he was trying to use a Jedi mind trick convincing us that bait fish was tuna. I told him that the fish looked an awful lot like bonito. Then he said “well it’s related to the tuna family”. Really bizarre. The captain kept going back-and-forth over the exact same area where our lures were clogged up with seaweed within moments of putting it in the water. He said “that’s just how it is” and that they’ve been affected by the seaweed all week. I asked if there is any other area we could go to, or other type of fishing where we could avoid the seaweed. He basically ignore the question. We had gone coastal fishing the day before with another captain. He was aware of the seaweed issue and went to an area where that was not a problem. I mentioned it to this captain and he ignored it saying “that was yesterday.” In my opinion the captain was lazy and greedy and probably would be only effective in perfect conditions where he could run his quarter mile up and down a small stretch and get back to you the Harbor within 20 minutes.

I have half a mind to report him to whatever the governing agency is for Fishing captains. It was that bad.