I wish I could leave a five-star review however I cannot. The crew was awesome and definitely deserves five stars for their customer service and attitude. They were both fellow scuba divers.
Prosโฆ.
Great attitude of the crew
Helpful and not overbearing to younger folks and helpful and understanding with my wife who is not as physically able as everyone else might be.
Consโฆ.
1. The boat is simply not fast enough for a Gulfstream fishing trip. When I pay $2,000 for an all-day fishing trip I expect more than 4 hours of fishing. We left at 6:00 a.m. and did not begin fishing until 10:00 a.m. We then quit fishing at 2:00 p.m. in order to be back at the dock at 6:00 p.m. essentially this was a boat ride with a little fishing as a side thought.
2. We lost a lot of good strikes while trolling. I believe these were a result of the captains insistence that he set the hook and then move the rod to a rod holder and then allow one of us to begin reeling. During the transition almost every time the fish slipped the hook. This was my fourth charter in which we engaged in trolling and I have never done it this way before. All times before we were allowed to simply pick up the rod when we had fish-on and reel it in. I never had any issue and have caught lots of very large fish on other charters this way. I only caught one small dolphin during trolling and due to the way I was having to reel in this very uncomfortable position of the rod being in a holder it felt like I was reeling in a whale. My elbow just about died due to the little tiny creaking motion it was being forced to make. Some of this could have been the type of reels as well. They did not seem to be of the same quality as I had used in previous charters. They seemed to have much shorter cranks than any other deep sea reels I have used including my own Penn Squalls.
3. Maintenance and cleanliness of boat and equipment was not up to par.
4. Captain seem to be too about not wasting bait. Most of the ballyhoos we were trolling with appeared to be previously used and had seen better days. They did get strikes but we lost every fish.
5. When bottom fishing the crew was basically in the way trying to do things for us that we did not need done. I had a pair of 14-year-olds who are quite capable of removing their own fish from the hooks and re-baiting their own hooks but they were really not allowed to. Crew kept putting really large pieces of bait on our hooks. This was causing the snapper to just bite but not be able to get hooked. I am not sure what the cut bait we were using was, but it was really thick and looked like pork belly! Too thick for what we were catching. I was wishing dearly for a box of squid and a box of cigar minnows. I am certain that we could have caught our limit of Vermillion snapper if I had a brought a $5 box of squid with us!
Our total catch for six people was.ย .
1 small dolphin
1 barracuda
1 King
15 Vermillion snapper
2 grunts
Conclusion. I would recommend this charter only for an in-shoe trip for mainly first timers.
I wish I could leave a five-star review however I cannot. The crew was awesome and definitely deserves five stars for their...