Uuuuuuggghhhh!! I’m not sure where or when you like your hurricane, but knocking on my door in November………says what is really happening. Well, not bad if you’re looking forward and making plans for when everybody comes back in December. For me right now, it feels like I’m being broken into for the third time this year despite whatever. I will tie this into my story and what to expect for November and December fishing if you read on….

Right now, November 6, we are wrapping up our Summer season (off season) and transitioning into Fall and Winter. Usually really nice and among my favorite time of year to be a local and do fun things on the water. Normally I have some down time. I work side jobs, help neighbors get caught up on chores, get the boat updated and set myself up for the December push of lots of trips and amazing fishing. In disbelief, a Cat3 hurricane is just below me. For you, imagine 3 feet of snow coming tomorrow to replicate my unusual perspective. It’s way outside of normal. Normal is abnormal for the second year in a row for us here. Our weather and climate is different now and I do my best to set you up for success.

No sales pitch. October was a waste. I can’t explain it. Plenty of people that wanted to do fun ocean things. Few, if any, opportunities to do much beyond close to shore trips. It does and can happen. This year is new territory. I had/have high hopes for November trips. Several unique amazing transitional changes occur and they will happen right about now. If it’s blowing, those scenarios blow past us and we never see them. My best guess was the last 2 storms that brushed by us took the energy out of the tropical energy system. That would normally give us a few weeks of amazing conditions defined by late October. I was and am very wrong. Hurricane instead. That’s not good for what I do well beyond reason. It’s just different weather than I have ever seen. Go look outside of your window right now and imagine 3 feet of snow that has fallen. It is a bit strange. My job is to provide an answer and solution to everything.

My perception is brutally honest. You might not understand it or be turned off initially. That’s understandable. Go to another charter operator’s page and look for recent or current information. You won’t find it. It’s because selling 2010 ideals is easier than if they were in business long enough to know the difference or if they cared to update their current business info or not. I just got off the phone with a lady looking for a trip with her husband. Wanted the cheapest place for 1-2 anglers; windy conditions. Gave her a referral and done. Not my customer. Not a trip I will run. Tell me you and I will have an answer. When you were in school, you got grades. Report cards. It was a point of measure. We have that too, organically, in the charter industry. On a basic level, it is reflected in prices or rates; sort of. Yes, some people have high/low rates for different reasons, but you pick your price point and get what you get to a degree for that category. Same if you buy a concert ticket or an airplane seat. You will mostly be in the same place, but the experience is where there is value. My past several months have sucked. I canceled more trips than I ran. For me, that means others are in more dire straights than my business. Desperation does not pay my bills. I charge what it costs me to survive here reasonably, but I run high quality trips. Going forward into season, the trickery will be on a very high level. Faking the truth will get me more trips, no doubt about it. I just saw we have 160 registered charter captains in Marathon. That is legally. If it helps, I know maybe a dozen. So …..buyer beware. I do a good job with all my stuff because it is my business to do so. Yes, it makes a difference. TripAdvisor made my business successful organically for many of my beginning years. I just recently went on TA after a long while and what I saw was the worst boat run under an illegal operation had the top 2 categories that are now very restricted on searching the TA website. Why? Money makes zeroes heroes in advertising. I was always top 3-5 with no money spent. It’s silly beyond description. The lie is easier to buy than earning the truth. A short cut for short success.

How about a fishing report to make this post more interesting?! It is a blog, so I can pack this with ramblings or facts. It will be different conditions when you read this and make your decision. Fish AND conditions have not been good for nearly all of October. We have a few calm days coming up forecasted around the 11th. We skipped Fall and went from summer sort of into Winter-ish. I don’t know what that means. Reports I have seen have been minimal. Right now, a ton of migrations are happening daily. Nobody is out there, so it is going by us and that’s it. Water temps have gone from 86 to 76. That’s close to impossible, so new life should be here everywhere. The conditions decide what we can do and where. In this scenario, everything begins to fire up following the summer heat. The reef should be primed to fire off, but if debris floats off of Cuba, we could see a short burst of incredible offshore fishing following this storm. There are no rules out there anymore. Just regulations and patterns and offshore could be epic November 9-14th. Wildcard. We ARE in the Florida Keys. Great fishing does still exist. Just have to pick your windows of opportunity.

December bookings are slowly starting to fill up. Now that the election is over, please feel free to spread that vacation dollar here locally. Yes, it’s all more expensive than where you came from. Your kids will waste their inheritance frivolously and you can’t take it with you, so let’s have a fun day on the water. December is the beginning of our windy season. Doesn’t mean much anymore because our seasons are whatever whatever. It is BEST to plan on what you know you can do and we can scale up on the day of your trip if there is time and the conditions are appropriate. We discuss your trip plan (mandatory) 48 hours before your scheduled trip to have the best updated info to make the best plan. I work hard to make sure each trip can meet my expectations. All I ask is that you show up on time/early and be properly prepared for what you selected and what we had we discussed. That doesn’t happen as much as it should. Your unplanned situations are called Plan B. To eliminate any surprises, plan D is disqualified. Long story short; getting sick causes me to be sick and cancel trips, thus killing many planned trips when I am very busy. Yes, always, but especially Christmas Week and a little bit after….DO NOT COME ON MY BOAT FEELING SICK OR SHOWING SIGNS OF ILLNESS. Last year that was a $14,300 mistake having the same rules I have now. I will not repeat that. It happens year after year. I will point to the sick person on my boat. You will step off the boat and make arrangements to go home. Do not put me in that position. Do not bring sick guests on my boat. Not going to happen. I have no way to defend my health and literally 100 people are depending on me to be healthy that week. All of their plans go to shit if I get sick from your trip. You wouldn’t want that reality either, so be respectful to what I do. It is just me doing everything. I need to be 100% healthy. Seriously.

In the water stuff…….hard edge has been the word. What does that mean? The gulf stream is beautiful clean warm water that flows from the deep offshore up our coast up the East Coast of the United States. Our shallow waters are like shaking a snow globe when it is windy. Everything gets stirred up for X amount of time. Where the reef water meets the gulf stream is the hard edge. Different every day and every tide. The calmer it is for longer periods, the better the visibility is. End of story. Reef water was 79 a few days ago. It will be cooling after this storm.

That is all I have for now. I’m frustrated. It has been confusing with conditions. I can’t make reality on the water be what you or I want lately. I can make a plan or evaluation based on the helpful information you provide me. Fill out the “notes” section of your reservation thoroughly to help us. Do not leave it blank. The business is doing ok. I’m doing my normal upgrades on the boat. It costs money to make money, so I am doing the reinvesting part. My rates pay my bills and my tips you generously donate go back into the boat to make it awesome for another year. I’m not sure what reviews are anymore. Please leave a review of your trip. I don’t even check anymore, but the last bad one came from a French guy that I would not book because he did not meet the minimum requirements for lobstering and the conditions were poor. He immediately left me a 1 star review. 3 minutes on the phone. I have not and I don’t, but I could pay to remove a bad one like everybody else or buy my way into a top rated shit charter operator with 12 reviews from relatives and friends total to be competitive on whatever is searchable. Not my game. Hard work and planning pays off and that is what I am here to do. I deal with more nonsense than you could imagine. Help me out a little bit if you had a good experience. I get 1 review for every 30-50 trips. That’s nearly an intolerable reality knowing what I do regularly. Sign of the times I guess.

Do your research. Pick a qualified charter operator. If there is a 3rd party involved, say no. If they want your credit card info over the phone say no. Because somebody else you booked with could not operate your charter, I have had all of your credit card info in my hands and we never met. At least 50 times. You had no idea. If their information is out of date, say no. So many businesses on social media have been out of business for years. They refer you to someone else and take a fee. Same price, different boat and captain. Bait and switch. If they don’t have insurance, they are as qualified as the person next to you at a stop light. If you are putting your family on a boat, you better know what you need to know before you sign up for that. Pretty close to the wild west here with a bit of looney tunes and some beavis and butt head slapping at cheech and chong. Nothing is enforced until it goes very wrong. Enforcement agencies here care………mostly after you die. Search every example. I encourage you. Do your homework and you will get the right charter operator to fit your trip. When you cut corners and prices, guess what else you cut?

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