My friend and I booked a full day big game trip with Captain George. Boat was a nice size and he bad quality fishing gear. He was knowledgeable and engaging and had some great stories but first and foremost his priority was putting us on fish - and he did!! An hour into the trip we had a giant rip which turned out to be a nice Bigeye tuna that broke off right at the boat. Shortly after we had a triple header!!! One broke off but we were able to land 2 nice Bigeye tuna. From there we got another drag screaming rip and managed to land a beautiful 150+ pound yellowfin tuna. Lots of dolphins around and the backdrop of Sao Miguel is stunning. Despite having such a great fishing day Jeorge still fished hard right to the end of the trip. It was a day to remember!!

Pedro did his best to find the fish. We went after many schools of birds, hits on the fishfinder and ploughed through many miles of ocean. The crew never stopped and kept on looking for signs. But fishing is fishing, and you need some luck. Unfortunately in our 4 hour trip, no bites. We did see a few whales and many, many dolphins jumping besides the boat. We went about 7-8 miles out of shore.

I doubted to book for this trip because the boat is relatively small. However, it’s very quick and for two anglers enough space! The equipment is very professional. Would recommend to book with Pedro!

We were greeted at the marina by Frasier who spotted us just as we spotted the boat, a smart 23 footer with a 200hp outboard, four boat rods and out-riggers. We had booked an in-shore trip purely as that is all our budget would stretch too.
Frasier took us to meet Pedro (captain) on a nearby boat who greeted us warmly as did Frasier. A nice strong Portuguese coffee later and we were off, we motored down the coast for a while and then Frasier deployed the rods for trawling with barracuda as one of the target species. Pedro explained about the fancy sonar equipment and enthusiastically filled us in on Sao Miguel’s history and geology responding to our many questions in excellent English.
We trawled for quite some time but the fish were clearly not hungry. Our fortune briefly appeared to change when one of the rod’s clutches started to slip and the first fish was on. My son faught it to the boat but lost it before we could identify the species.
We were offered the chance to head to deeper water where a friend of Pedro was into some big tuna.  We regrettably turned this down in the hope that bottom fishing would be more productive. We spent the rest of the trip doing just this and landed a few tiddlers, sea bream mainly but nothing to get too excited about.
However, the trip was great fun and our lovely hosts did everything they could to get into some decent fish but it was not our day.
With hindsight we should have taken the opportunity to go to deeper waters where the tuna were, hey-ho, we live and learn.
Highly recommended