Interesting title, right? All for reasons that I know…..and…..try my very best to pass on to you to be applied to your trip. I held on to this post way too long before publishing it. I don’t want to scare away customers in our current economic situation. It hits me first because I am in the want business and not the need business. My goal is to only operate successful trips that everybody has so much fun that I get your business again next time you’re here. I have been operating my business for 14 years. So much has changed in that time. I know my business A-Z and I have created a wining recipe for the trips that I offer to you. You have many, many charter operators competing for your business. That’s fine. Do your research. I am different from most. When you book a charter with me, we are starting a relationship that requires each of us to be invested and prepared for success. It is not 100% on me. This is going to be a longer post than I like, but read it all. 2025 advertising leans towards some action pictures and fluffy short generic statements to capture your interest. No, because that is where the problems start. Let me explain how this works when done the right way. Knowledge is power.
First, let me address charter life, tariffs and our local charter fleet. My business is going to be around until I can no longer physically do this. I’m never going to retire or be rich. It’s a lifestyle. Being a charter captain is a life choice I chose and I mostly like what I’m doing, so I do it. I have been through too many hurricanes to count, cancer, covid, environmental and economic disasters and many life challenges. I am going to be around as many others come and go for valid reasons. I am the owner, operator, captain, secretary, mechanic, marketer, accountant, weatherman and sometimes that evolves into being your repeat captain and local friend. I have done everything I can to bolster my business and prepare for tariffs and the economic challenges we are going to face right now. This alone will divide the direction of the charter fleet. Take that very seriously! I re-invested into my business year after year and I began this year with new engines, new electronics with backups, new pumps, a new toilet and some new cushions. I am always ahead of it because I have had 100% up time for the past 8 years or more. Been too long to count or remember when I lost a trip to a mechanical failure. That is NOT going to be the case for everybody you can book a charter with. Fishingbooker.com is the new cancer in our industry locally. It attracted the bottom of the barrel charter operators that did not have an established business, side gig guides, businesses without a website, advertising or a payment system and gave them a way to be united in a union to have top search ranking on google. To have their new business success up front and center, they give up 25% of their income off the top to start and they have a template to have a business without having to do the steps to make a actual business. Great for them. It worked so well that it flipped the charter hierarchy and now the cancer spread to legitimate guys because it is impossible to compete with their advertising dominance. I lost 60% of my 2024 business to boats that would never have any influence on my business because they are shit. Charter fishing is expensive. We have too many guides choking each other out financially due to the price structure. Now, tariffs will pinch those new “businesses” tighter and it will be self consuming. They will have to cut additional costs to make day to day operations work and that will cost……..the person that clicked on a paid ad for this conglomerate and then booked a charter that they know nothing about. This island can support maybe 40-50 guides. Fishingbooker is promoting +250 guides in Marathon, many offering charters for less than what I can advertise for. They give up 25% to be there. They undercut my prices. Tariffs will add another +30% or so cost of operation. I make 100% of the numbers I manage and can control for income. I have side gigs and live a very thrifty lifestyle. You get 100% out of me every trip. If you make 100% of your paycheck, throw away 25% of that to show up to work every day. Throw away 30% more to cost of operation for yourself to go to work. If your job was 100% unregulated, what or how would you change your daily operation if you lose 50% of your income for you just showing up to work? That is the boat the fishingbooker guys are in now and hopefully that boat will sink. Nobody goes to work for half price period. I picked up some charter fliers last time I was out and about locally. Never heard of these guys. They seem to be paralleling my business model. Just ask them to see their insurance and ask them if their insurance covers you outside of the boat or where they are docked at your pick up/drop off location. That is paperwork I carry with me every day. I think we are down to 2 insurance companies that will provide the coverage I have for my guests outside of the boat. My insurance has been dropped a few times with zero claims over 14 years and my rates love to go up. Who wants to insure a boat operator that lets people outside of the boat to do whatever? Almost nobody. The people that advertise bring drinks and lets go to the sandbar……are in the process of learning why short cuts don’t work in the long term. It is expensive to run a business legally and responsibly. Seriously, nobody cares to check that until after a major news worthy accident. Most cuts, pokes and stitches do not make any news. If this didn’t matter you would not be reading it here. I could parallel on the fake game, weasel and cheat my way to the top and raise rates to have you pay more in a system that keeps you from communicating directly with me and paying a fair price for what you get. Deal directly with me, or go play a game to pay more for less for a booking agency that masks the reality of what you really get. Fishingbooker is not ever going to hurt or post a negative review of a user experience that is controlled by the operator of the system of information. They manipulate their world. The captain will pay to have your negative review removed. You are welcome to research my reviews. Google and Trip advisor. Got a 1 star review recently from somebody that mis identified me as another boat they had some sort of altercation with when fishing from a dock and a french guy gave me a 1 star review because he did not want to leave a deposit for booking a trip with me from a 1 minute phone call that he hung up on me. If you want to book a trip with me, you have to leave a deposit. He texted me some unflattering french terms and left me a 1 star review describing me as “unfriendly.” I tried to help him and he fucked me online, as some choose to do despite any reality. That is doing business these days. People that don’t use my business and have no involvement in my business can murder me with a 1 star review for anything. However, Fishingbooker, all their guys are really good. Right, right? All great guides. Think about it for a sec.
Sombrero Lighthouse
Anyhowwwwww, March was great. It was. March is Spring Break and we had many great opportunities to have A+ trips. I am very realistic when communicating with you, preparing you verbally and it is all backed up with the information I provide you on here. For fishing trips, what I do is fairly easy like a,b,c or 1,2 and 3. We start with a plan that I know will work. Something we discussed. I teach you something that takes less than 10 minutes to learn the basics of and you should be able to teach somebody else what I taught you in 10 minutes. I explain the game and give you the cheat sheet. A, b c or 1,2 3. Once you get that, we refine it to improve it to make a better result. March trips we left a lot of untapped potential out on the water. I do what I can do very well. I do not have control of what you can or can’t do. I saw many of my March guests were not fully aware of or prepared for spending 4 hours on a boat out on the water catching fish using 3 step instructions repeated a hundred times. I do not know where the disconnect was, but there were lots of trips we were 3 hours into “open the bail, point the rod to the fish you want to catch and let the line out” and the person holding the rod had no clue what I was talking about. I have a pretty simple recipe. We are working together side by side to make an outcome. If we are fishing or cooking together…If you don’t know the ingredients, don’t know the utensils, don’t know the stove, don’t understand what my guiding voice is saying and don’t know what we are cooking…3 hours in on a 4 hour trip….I have done all I can and what we get is what we get. I am open to suggestions. I understand everybody learns differently. Some sort of backwards reverse magic happens where the people that appear to be uninterested and have no experience ace the task and those that actually have a base knowledge are unable to learn the easiest thing and restrict our planned success. I would love to have some understanding of this, but I can’t figure it out. You tell me how I can do it differently and it will be the new way. Fishing requires some user input. We are trying to fool a wild animal into eating something that has a hook in it attached by some line to a human. If you show the fish our trick every try aka “drift” the fish believe there is a hook in a bait attached by a line connected to a human. It only matters if you want to have a catching day vs. a fishing day. I do custom trips. You just have to tell me all about your group. If you are Mom or Dad reading this and you have a hard time getting the kids to do anything, hear anything or make a positive outcome from anything asked or instructed, I will inherit that reality. The best thing you can do is put that in your booking notes because I can make a plan for that. Seriously. I start each trip believing I can teach 3 step instructions to people that can learn and apply those steps to make something good happen on a trip we have planned together. It takes a good chunk of charter time to realize that is not the case. I have choices to make adjustments before the trip. I have some fish that can be fooled most of the time, smart fish that can be fooled some of the time, smarter fish than smart fish and really really smart fish. Let me know so I can make the best match and move and progress up. An April fool would ignore this and learn the same way the March people learned. Backwards. No good. A boat trip is like a construction project. I supply the foundation, the building materials and the blue print. You are the labor that completes the project. We either build up or destroy the foundation.
A windy day snapper trip
Now that you swallowed those 2 horse pills of information, let’s dive in to April information. April is a month of wind. Not all of it. Let’s call half of April too windy, 25% breezy and 25% just right. It gets better in May. I can make a plan for your trip on the calendar, but having a little wiggle rooms helps take advantage of better conditions days. So you want to book a trip. Start with a date earlier in your trip or time here. Try to allow for some wiggle room. Now we enter a Plinko scenario from the price is right. Who is in your group? Plink. What do you want to do? Plink. What can you do? Plink. How much time did you reserve to do it? Plink. What are the conditions for your trip? Plinko. That is the answer. Lot’s of variables. It’s a pretty tough question to answer over the phone. I play matchmaker and do my best to make it all work. That is how it works best. This month we could be on either side of the island catching snapper for dinner and catch and release grouper. Along the way we catch jacks, mackerels, some odd balls and even a few sharks. That is the easy answer. If you like more fishing than catching, we can go tarpon fishing or target sailfish. If the weather looks great we can head far offshore for tuna or early mahi. Again more skills, patience, understanding and your timely active involvement in what we are doing as a team to make a good outcome.
Other stuff is pretty good. I know we have some late spring breakers around. Snorkeling is going to be highly situational timed after our wind events and before the next wind event. Think of a snow globe. Shake it up, how long does it take to settle? Snorkeling works the same. Sandbar trips can be a good alternative. Water is hovering in the 78 degree range. If you want to fish and jump in, we can hit a sandbar if the visibility isn’t there to snorkel. Sunset cruises are great too. That is about all I have for now. Not the most exciting report, but we have the month of April to make the most of a great time of year to fish. We crushed the trips that went right in March. April and May hold more potential for greatness.
A spring break reef trip, with some giant fish released. I always ask for pictures. Rarely do I get them.
I almost forgot. The duels! I offer light tackle fishing. What does that mean? Balance. We have clear water here. Nearly every spot I drop anchor on is full of fish in most cases. I see them. They see me. I put chum in the water. The fish eat chum, they get happy and feed closer to the boat. We begin fishing. I have to make a choice in what type of line to use. What does that mean? The moment we put 1 line in the water we have a footprint. I can use heavy line that will not break while fighting the fish we are targeting. That will make a footprint so big we will instantly destroy any potential success. Instant failure because they see our tackle. I have to match very light line and very small tackle to NOT show the fish what we are doing to get bites. Simple concept so far? That light line breaks easily and is a delicate connection for the fish we are targeting, but now we can get bites if we make good presentations. I have a setting on the reel I adjust to allow a desired amount of pressure to be applied without breaking the line under heavy pressure. That is called drag. The fish can pull line off the real before it exceeds the line strength. It makes a distinct noise when it is going out. The line strength, the drag setting and how you fight the fish with a common sense basic technique makes or breaks your fight with the fish quite literally. It is a system of balance involving give and take. It is a relationship. I can teach you this in the moment as it is happening. That is an easy time to learn it because you can see and hear what is happening in relation to what is happening. You can google it or anything if it is worth preparing for. I’m sure there is a hundred youtube videos on it. I can’t teach this to excited male teens or grown men in many cases. It’s happening, I’m instructing and my words are not channeling through the person fighting the fish. The fish is fighting for its life. We have a delicate connection to that fish. If there is no thought, strategy or consideration when we are on a big fish opportunity, how does it work? Luck is a low percentage answer to that. It works much better if we understand the relationships to tackle to technique. It is very basic. I want to teach you to do it right from the start. A foundation of learning basic skills that applies to all of what we do from the moment you step on my boat. Invest in your success. Learn and earn. It is totally unrealistic to show up knowing nothing, doing what is being taught incorrectly, making mistakes and expecting excellent results. Everything is connected and the more you put into investing in your success comes back to help you in every type of trip.
a large grouper caught on the lightest tackle possible
One last thing that is trending and not going the best direction. I have been proven wrong many times making a pre judgement on how a trip is going to go from what I see at the dock. What I observe and learn the first 5 minutes or so helps me make the final revisions to the plan we have for your trip. You are the leader of your team. It’s good to let me know about your crew. Teenage boy, black socks with sandals, black shirt, no sunglasses or hat, nothing in his hands. From experience, I 99% know my future when we check these boxes. Team leader, please prepare your crew and let me know if this guy is coming. I can make an easier plan for your trip. The more I know, the more you are invested in your trip, the better it goes every single trip. You can’t cheat that fact.
Dinner for a week!