My son and I had an enjoyable morning on the water with Captain Justin and Mate Mike.  Both were great guys with much local knowledge and love for fishing and nature in general. We did catch a decent sized barracuda and a couple yellow tails. While fising for yellowtail, some ballyhoo fish appeared and the crew jumped into action to net some.  This allowed us to troll with them which quickly got us with several hookup…only the barracuda was successfully boated.  We appreciate the captain’s extra efforts to catch fish.  I would recommend giving All Hanns on Deck a try.

I hesitate to leave a less than stellar review for anybody as I am a guide in a different line of work, however, I want to share my thoughts. I do not make a lot of money and a fishing charter is something that I have never decided to book because it’s hard to justify spending $1000 on a day on the water with the potential of not catching anything. But for my husband’s birthday, decided to bite the bullet after reading reviews. Let me preface this by saying that we are new to fishing and very excited to learn about fishing, so a charter with a captain was a learning opportunity. I had saved up enough for a special morning afternoon and booked a 3/4 day charter and message that captain about the upcoming trip. I mentioned that we were inexperienced, but excited to be in Key Largo and hoping for the best fishing. I noticed in the trip description that there would be the option of snorkeling (another thing that we hoped to do in Key Largo). The captain was a very quiet and unenthusiastic when we arrived, I could get the sense that he wasn’t feeling optimistic about the fishing conditions, which is fine, but we made it clear to him that we were not coming to catch trophy fish, we were open to going to other areas and trying to catch smaller things that we could hopefully take home for dinner. We did catch two barracudas, which was exciting, but I would have liked to have learned a little about barracudas, as I said, I’m new to fishing. The captain had an assistant on the boat who tried to keep conversations going at some point, but I just made for an awkward few hours. About 10% of the ride was actual hands on, while the rest was just sitting. I understand that on some days, the fish just aren’t there. If the fish weren’t biting, I would have loved to have gone swimming, that was part of the reason that I invested in this charter, because it was listed as an option and I did ask for that on a pre-charter message. But that was never presented while on the boat. If there was a reason that conditions were not right for swimming either, they were not expressed to me. The captain barely said anything in the whole 6 hours. I regretted even paying more for a longer charter, because it just made for longer sitting. Off shore fishing feels like two guys doing all of the work, and then them letting you step in for the very end. When we docked back, the captain did gift us some stone crab claws, he probably keeps some on hand for bad fishing days. I did tip the customary 20%, though I was sad about the charter overall. I could not tell if the captain was grateful for that, or offended, he didn’t have much personality. Overall, these types of fishing charters should be left for those of you who have an extra $1000 and nothing else to spend it on. Not for those of you who saved up for an exciting experience.