I am an experienced fisherman with over 10 years of fishing off shore and inland. This trip, I chose to bring along a young lady who had never been off shore fishing before. Initially, my first conversation with Paradise Charters was so confusing, I got the feeling that he wasn’t too enthused to take us out the following day. Eventually he agreed to contact me later in the day for confirmation, a text came later saying to meet him at it around sun up at a pier nearby. The next morning I called to say we were on our way. He informed me that he would be later than said as he was just leaving his residence and that he would need extra time, very disappointing. He arrived at the pier just as we were, no greeting, no politeness, nothing. He then motored to another spot in the sound to cast for live bait, dismal results, maybe a dozen croakers if that. Made no mention that he planned to use lures or that he had other types of bait on board. I could go on and on but I won’t , simply put we spent more time moving from one spot to another without any explaination , we did find some mahi mahi, he would land the fish and hand off to my guest which was fine but Inws not offered a rod to fish for myself, I’ve fished for caught mahi mahi numerous times and am well versed in how to fish for them but as I said he spoke very little to us so we never knew what we were supposed to do. In other spots we caught fish we couldn’t keep, for instance Triggers, small snapper, ect.
I realize that fishing in the gulf is not a given on any day, however I have been to nearby piers to judge what others were catching and they seemed to have no problem catching fish that could be kept. We spent more time traveling from one so called honey spot to another only to stay a minute or two and then off to another so called honey spot. whennasked if we were marking fish, he said nothing or that we would be drifting over some shortly, what the heck did that mean???. Overall Capt. Justin Simmons may be a good charter captain, I have no way of knowing that , all I know is that my guest who was taking her first off shore fishing experience let me know that if that is what charter fishing is like, then she will not be going again, I assured her that she should not paint them all with the same brush, I have been on numerous trips with excellent results and had exceeded my expectations. I would like to think that Capt. Simmons was just having a bad day, I only wish he had it on another day than ours.

We didn’t even get to go. Long story short I’ll be calling Monday morning!

Never saw him in person, took 3 days of phone messages for him to call me. Agreed on meeting time on charter day only to get a text saying he would be 30 minutes that morning. 30 minutes later get a text saying he could not get there at the agreed time “if he had wings”. Not what we signed up for and replied to forget it - want my deposit $ back!