Too slow about.

I am a very experienced fisherman, caught a lot of small and big fish all over the globe, using most tackle and technics one can think off. The mate was a great, passionate and experienced fisherman (5 stars), I feel sorry for him. The rest was of less than poor quality (1 star). It is NOT difficult to find striped bass … just look for the other boats around Block Island. The first four bites or so were all missed because of a J hook so rusty it would not even penetrate my thumb under pressure. The mate was really embarrassed by the situation and tried to sharpen it. After another fish was missed, I switched to my own circle hook and hooked-up a few minutes later. The rod and reel I was given was from the 60’s, never seen those models in my life. (My) hook came off of a big fish unfortunately. I switched to my own tackle, three bites, three fish in the boat (two big seabass, small shark) … but it was too late as the early morning striped bass bite had died by that time. The “captain’s rod” caught one fish (small shark) out of six to eight bites! This joke of a trip cost me $900 total … a decent, sharp, modern hook cost less than $1 to put everything in perspective. This was not a professional guide service at all and shall not even be listed on fishingbooker. There is no excuse because the fish were biting at first … and I caught three thirty pounder the day before in half the time with a real professional crew a few miles away (Montauk).

EDIT: 1. I was neither given “other options” nor told the fishing was slow. The mate actually told me his girlfriend caught a big striped bass (>40 lb) amongst many others two days before and the forecast was good. As I said, I caught three nice striped bass the day before less than 10 miles away.
2. “Little sea bass” were not what I was missing at all. And actually, the “one good run” was on MY hook and leader after I changed it on the rod as I became tired of missing fish and losing my time using the captain’s tackle.
3. I confirmed the reel was from the 60s. I typed “vintage Penn reel” in a net search engine and the said reel was found immediately as a green Penn Spinfisher 700.
4. I would NEVER fish with them again, I can out fish this captain 10 to 1 any day!