I got an e-mail that said that i was booked for a trip with damon and that we should meet at 7:30.
First there were no signs of Coolwater (they had changed them without telling) so it was hard to find the right spot. A few minutes after 7.30 captain Robert arrived´. I asked him if he was Damon and he explained to me like a was an idiot that Damon does not run the tours, they do, Then I asked if he was going to runt with me, then he said no and turned his back on me. I had to ask him again if he knew where our captain was. He said that our captain would arrive in a few minutes.
15-20 minutes late our captain finally arrived and took us on for the trip. We told him we didn’t want to go on the windiest parts since we were afraid of seasickness (it was quite windy, 22 mph).
Before we could go out and fish we had to catch live bait and transport out to the windiest part of the sea ( i guess that the fish was there?!). We started fishing with shrimps as bait and caught two fish each. My girlfriend and the two other guys that went with us got live bait and i asked to get that aswell. it took a long time before i got to have live bait and it was hard to fish when the boat swang from one side to another. After some time i got to fish with live bait aswell, then I caught another fish. After this captain corey said we were gong to try to fish for some barracudas. We went for 15-20 minutes in the windy sea and he tried to catch some barracuda that we were supposed to take in turns to reel in. After 20 minutes no barracuda was caught and we had to start going home again. The transportation took in total something like 1h 45min during the tour so it was almost half the fishing trip. I was not aware of this since i don’t remember reading anything about in in the description. All in all there were very little discription about the trip so you didn’t know what to expect. when we got back in port the captain sliced a total of 7-8 fishes that 4 guys managed to catch and we got a few fillets that we could cook. I don’t know how much fish you are supposed to cath but it seemed a bit few. We caught more that we threw back in again but there weren’t that many.
After this we were supposed to pay so I paid the remaining amount of 280 dollars (330 dollars in total). When we had paid, the captain explained that he worked on tip and that we were supposed to tip him around 20 percent (i.e. 65 dollars). I explained to him that i didn’t think he had deserved this much amount and that the experience was not what I had expected. I Also thought is was already very expensive with 330 dollars so I didn’t wish to add another 65 dollars for him slicing up 4 fished and hooking of the same besides driving the boat. I mean, what did I pay 330 dollars for ? I also told him that his working conditions wasn’t my problem.
Then he got honestly upset and I felt that we had bad feelings abou each other. Finally I tipped him 7 dollars or something which was all the cash I had left in my wallet just because it was christmas. (we just used credit card).
Summary:
There was a nice trip but the fishing didn’t in any way live up to my expetations, the captain helped my girlfriend but not me and then he wasted a lot of time trying to catch barracudas without result.
For the price I am not satisfied. I booked the trip before we got there and when we were down in the keys I saw i lot of adverts on other boats that were much cheaper. I also spoke to a bunch of americans that said that it was seriously overpriced with 330 dollars. My advice is, choose another firm and book when you are down there instead!
I got an e-mail that said that i was booked for a trip with damon and that we should meet at 7:30.
First there were...
