So our trip was booked for Wednesday 7/18. I called the Captain that morning to find out that his boat had a blown engine and would not be able to take us that day. Found out that the boat had been down for weeks but had not received any communication that there was an issue.  He told us he should have it fixed Thursday.  On Thursday he informed us it would be Friday but later than the 1 p.m. time we had booked.  We finally departed on Friday around 2:45. Once we got out trolling, the first mate baited up the 5 lines (there were 6 of us)  and we started fishing.  We enjoyed the next 4 hours of trolling while the smell of diesel permeated everything. Apparently the repair was not performed by quality mechanics. Needless to say we had 3 bites and caught zero fish in 4 hours.  Was the smelliest, least eventful 4 hour boat ride I have ever endured.  Not sure if the captain could not locate any fish or if the smell of raw diesel made sure they did not get anywhere close. The deck hand was interesting and had some good stories he told while drinking his beer.  Unfortunately a boat ride with some stories does not seem worth $650 to me. 
When we got back to the dock I paid the remainder of the bill to the captain. He got angry that I had booked through Fishing Booker and asked why I did not cancel through them and pay him the full $650.  I felt this was a bit shady.  We tipped the deckhand $60 and then upon leaving received a text from the “captain” that we had screwed his deckhand out of money and that we were “sorry people” (Remember the deckhand baited 7 lines total and drank beer) Not a good experience for our first time fishing in a boat.  Will not recommend this charter. Maybe he just had a bad day.

Caught 4 little fish in 4 hours

When we booked the trip, we never received correspondence back from the Captain; we had to call him the day before to find out where and when.  The day of, he walks past us and to the top of the boat.  There was no hey welcome aboard or anything of that nature.  He really didn’t speak much to us at all.  Almost as if we were an inconvienence to him.  Herman, the deck hand, was nice and assisted us on the boat.  Told us a little bit about what we were going to do and then we were off.  We took off from the dock, filled up with gas and then headed out intot he waters.  We “trolled” for more than an hour with only two bites and one fish.  It seemed like we were just going in circles for a very long time.  Finally, after about two hours Herman says we are going to go to another spot and just drop the lines since we aren’t catching anything.  He changes out the rods and we get to the spot, Capt Will finally comes down for the first time and drives the boat from the main deck.  He tells us when to drop our lines.  We do this for about half an hour and at that point we have caught our limit on Red Snapper (10 total fish) and he says we are done and going back in.  This is the first time he interacts with us and talks to us as we head back into the docks.  When we get off the boat, I settle up with Capt Will and he tells me that the payment is now $1100 (about $500 more) because he took us to catch Red Snapper.  This was never discussed with us, he never mentioned an upcharge or anything.  I told him we booked the trolling charter, he decided to take us to another spot which I appreciated since we finally started catching fish but I was not paying anything more.  While Herman was cleaning our fish he yelled down to me that there was an ATM at Tacky Jack’s.  When I did not give him a response he then told Herman that he wanted a bag of the fish.  Since we did not pay the extra he took some of our fish.  I would not recommend this trip, I’m glad this happened at the beginning of our vacation because it definitely dampened the day for us but not our vacation.  I will say, Herman, was very personable and helpful.  He helped us on and off the boat, helped with reeling the fish and any issues we ran into with our line.  He deserves a higher rating and we definitely tipped him!

Deckhand was fantastic, very enjoyable to be around.  We did catch some fish which was nice.  Captain was rude and accused us of breaking a window on his boat which was absolutely untrue.  Boat was in significant disrepair, dirty and smelled terrible inside.  Overall, I would certainly not book another trip.