We had a ton of fun.  These guys know what there after even with a front coming in they got us hooked up.

Guide cut outing short in middle of trip. Gave 5 hours out of 8. One of worse 5 outing we’ve done ever.

Bsd

In our initial correspondence through Fishingbooker.com , I specifically mentioned being interested in big sharks, namely bulls, hammerheads and tiger sharks only, specifically saying not interested in catching blacktip sharks, etc Jake suggested a custom 8 hour outing, during which he suggested that we should be able to catch between 2 to 10 of the target big shark species.
He also suggested the charter time starting at 2 pm, ending at 10 pm, at our best window would be in the 3:30 pm to 5 pm range. He then switched the suggested charter time to run from 12 pm to 8 pm in one of the comments, which unfortunately, I didn’t realize at the time, and booked the charter starting at 12 pm thinking we were to start at 2 pm. My oversight, my fault.
We arrived at 1 pm, thinking we were an hour early, when we were actually 1 hour late. Jake and his helper were already there, with a rod already in the water, and setting up the other rods. They had all the right gear, big 80 to 130 reels, a used both a kayak and drone to get the baits out, as we were fishing from shore.
Action was very slow, all we hooked was one blacktip shark, somewhere around 5 pm or so. As evening rolled in and it started getting cool, my friend and I had a few drinks, about 3-4 ounces of rum and whiskey each. So were a bit tipsy, and in a very good mood looking forward to some better night fishing.
Just before 7 pm, Jake started pulling in the rods, saying the outing was over. Thinking that we still had 3 hours left instead of one, I question his actions. Instead of discussing and showing me the booking (I had no access to the site from my phone), he just told us that they had been there since 11 am, and if we had a problem, we should take it up with fishingbooker. He packed up the gear, and we left shortly after 7 pm, very unhappy.
The following day, we went back and forth via text messaging, Apparently, he had called fishingbooker and told them we were drunk and upset before he started pulling the lines, at which point they advised him to cancel the outing fearing it was unsafe to continue.
I told him I would check the times of booking when I got home to Canada the following day, and he turned out to be right about my error. He also suggested that we should be happy we landed 1 shark, even though it was a small blacktip which we were not interested in fighting on heavy gear designed to haul in sharks over 500 lbs.
Being a lifelong fisherman for over 45 years, and fishing well over 100 days per year, I wasn’t thrilled with his attitude towards the incident, and him trying to gaslight me into thinking our outing was worth it. I had fished with dozens of guides across the USA and Canada before, including many in Florida, and for big bull and hammerhead sharks, as well as tarpons, goliath grouper and blacktips.
Instead of acknowledging the fact that he cut our prepaid outing 1 hour short, and that the situation would have been avoided if he had handled it properly, he just kept blaming me for drinking and having too high of expectations for the outing, despite the fact that it was him who threw out the number of 2 to 10 big game sharks.
Almost comically, he also suggested that I leave him a good review, mentioning how we landed a nice blacktip and safely released it. In fact, they were going to harvest the sark for bait, despite it being visibly pregnant with pups. They left it flapping in the sand out of the water for a good 5 minutes, after sitting on it’s back to remove the hook. All of which go against the recommended release practice outlined by the FWC in their mandatory shore fishing for shark training course we took before the outing. To my big surprise, they changed their minds about harvesting the shark, and simply dragged it back down he shore and let it go in the ocean. It swam off, though I highly doubt it survived the ordeal.
To conclude, we were misled by Jake about the chances of success before booking the outing, though I realize that he did what he could to make it happen during the short while we fished. I would have booked 2 or 3 days to better our chances, had I known better beforehand, as this trip was my 50th birthday present to myself, and had been looking forward to it for 10 months.
Among all the guides I’ve ever booked or fished with, Jake and the noname charter crew ranks among the least professional in the mannerism, and the outing turned out to be in my top 3 least successful, as well as taking rank number 1 for being the most frustrating due to guide’s attitude.
In general, I’m am not a malicious person trying to badmouth anyone, nor hurt their business. I was actually not going to bother posting this review, but after discussing with my adult sons when getting home, they all were in agreement that I should post what happened to avoid Jake and his gang doing this to others.