January Update 2026

Happy New Year fish fans and ocean adventurers! Hopefully we will have a chance to get out on the water together for the best day of your vacation in 2026. Looks pretty cold up your way, so I expect to see some of you pretty soon! Right up to today, January has been producing the nicest conditions I have ever seen for the month. Just like January always is, the volatility is now upon us and our 75 degree day today will become a 55 degree day tomorrow with lots of wind. That is classic January and I am here to tell you all about what is good, what is bad and what to expect for the next month or so. I have time to chat, so this is longer than normal and has some inside perspectives in closing.
So, if the weather is volatile, how can you plan a trip? Clearly, nobody can predict the weather more than a few days out. The answer is actually pretty easy. I don’t know you or the members in your group. Obviously, you want to do something fun on the water. I have a list to choose from. The best way to plan your trip is know your specific interest and what will also be good for everybody in your group. Pick a trip that is realistic for your group to have fun and success for this time of year. Book it on my website! It takes less than 5 minutes. If there are some extra ambitious things on your want list, put those details in the booking notes. We plan and adjust the trip specifics 48 hours before your scheduled booking and go from there. I know what I do very well. I don’t know you at all and essentially we are going on a first date. Only thing more challenging than a first date is a blind date doing something that isn’t going to work well or at all. That is not my jam. I like to know what is going on with you and your group because hundreds of small actions and decisions come from what I know. I am the matchmaker of all of the variables I see in front of me. We can only do what the conditions allow for. I will put the best options in front of you and we will decide together. I can look back on 2025 trips that didn’t go well or as planned and there is only 1 thing that is a factor. A customer booked a trip for some activity and showed up. I’ll save you the stories…it wasn’t good for anybody. Well, the world is a changing place and everything is different now. If you are reading this you are ahead of 70% of my typical guest that books a trip and you are ahead of 99% of the people that are coming along on that trip. Using this information is the key to success. No guest ever considers this. If I do not prepare thoroughly for your trip, our success will be related to my investment in or lack of preparation for your trip. If your group shows up similar to as if you were all going to watch a movie, what can I do with that? Not as much as either of us would hope. The reality of our relationship is we are doing everything together. How the experience goes is most influenced by how we invest in each other. I can never get the importance of this across to the majority of my guests. Understanding this, half of my December and my recent January trips were booked 2 hours or 12 hours before the trip. I can and will do last minute trips. The boat is poised and ready to go at all times. Those trips worked just fine. The more time we have to prepare, the better the trip goes is a general rule.
Fishing in January is mostly reef fishing or fishing within 7 miles from shore. As the water cools, more life comes in closer in the shallows and we have more close in opportunities. It is an excellent time of year for fishing. Each passing cold front brings a new wave of life to the deep reef, the shallow reefs, the bridges and bay side spots. A 4 hour reef trip can have us in any of these locations based on the weather and your group. Snappers, groupers, jacks and mackerel make up the majority of the fish we regularly come across. Sailfish, wahoo, african pompano and sharks are some of the options that could be dialed in or just end up on the line as a surprise catch. Everything is moving around, so you never know. Far offshore the tuna bite remains constant of the Marathon Humps. Mostly blackfin tuna, some skipjack tuna and a few other limited options based on conditions.

Snorkeling is a tough call the next few months. With the shifting wind directions and passing fronts our visibility can be here in the morning and gone in the afternoon. It is something we can plan for, but only act on if the conditions are there. Some of the underlying tone in this post is I looked back at my 2025 online reviews and lack of and was the recipient of a lousy review because we only fished and could not go snorkeling. Hmmmmmmm. Wonder why we didn’t go snorkeling? I make the judgement calls because you hired me to not have to find out the hard way. Christmas week I ran a similar snorkeling/fishing trip in 25mph winds just after a cold front passed in seemingly impossible conditions. I had one shallow protected reef in a little nook that gave us a 1 hour window that got the job done. I promise you all, they were the only people that snorkeled that day in the entire florida keys during the busiest week of the year. Snorkeling is usually the easiest activity for me to do on your trip. I pay double the cost of regular charter insurance to protect you and your well being in the water on my snorkeling trips. Outside of a commercial carrier, no other private charter does that because of the steep cost and extra level of protocol required to obtain the insurance I elect to pay for you. Continuing on, the water conditions will be cooler in the 65-68 degree range going forward. That is entirely a guess. Wet suits can be rented from captain hooks for $10 each.
In general, things are good. The boat is in excellent shape and ready to go have some fun. I have been working on advertising and administrative stuff to keep busy. The back half of my 2025 business fell off of a cliff for reasons centered around the local economy, the macro economy and some changes with social media and online advertising. As we all know, the online landscape is rapidly evolving with algorithms and AI reshaping the information we search for and are exposed to. Recently, I did plenty of research to figure a way to stay at the top of my profession and I was shocked by how buried I am in the pile of whatever the charter industry has become here. TripAdvisor made me successful. The old TripAdvisor 14 years ago. I have always used it and still do a little, but it is just an advertising scam now.

The common methods anybody would use to find a reputable fishing charter here in the Keys is 99% manipulation by paid ads, ads that look like organic search results info or platforms that operate as an advertising and booking ecosystem that is entirely fake, such as fishingbooker.com. On TripAdvisor I tried to find myself or other top rated well established local charters here in Marathon. It ranks all of us on reviews and such………no it does not!!!! Not anymore. It actually was difficult to find anybody you would want to be fishing with. I think I found my business on “things to do” way down on the list. Here is what you will see, but not understand about the top 5 charters listed for Marathon. You are not on that boat in the pictures, you are not fishing with that captain, you are in a pool of possible captains, the pictures are from private boats/private trips, some pictures are from areas not in the Keys, some are stock pictures, the number one ranked charter has 25 reviews total all 5 star, some of the top listed guys have zero reviews and once you get past the top 5 guys it takes you to Key West charters.

It can look like there are only a few choices for fishing locally. These listed people are entirely bought in to the matrix. This is the trusted app that ranks the best local businesses. TripAdvisor is total garbage now. The same for fishingbooker. That site will capture all your top charter searches and you will be exposed to under qualified unvetted captains that give away the majority of their profitability to be in front of others. They are poor at running a business and went with a grow a business overnight kit. They are the uber to my taxi cab. Anybody with a boat is running charters on fishingbooker. Uber vets their drivers. You would be quite surprised how many local fishingbooker charter captains appear in the MCSO Arrest page. It is a form of local entertainment. My point, any search for me will only put conglomerate charter booking sites before anything I can realistically do on my own. How do I change that? Reviews on google. I run really good trips. You can see that on all my social media posts. Nobody leaves me reviews. Part of my last bad review is I implemented a new booking platform that sends out reminder emails for reviews and social media engagement and my booking site used my secondary gmail account for my notification of a booked charter(they were the first booked trip online) and I was late. They never checked in. I had no idea I had a charter. They had the option to cancel the trip, go out late or reschedule the next day. They chose to go out late and write me a bad review. The guy was an Ahole and his kids had a great time. That is not a big deal. The big deal is all of the great trips that don’t write a review because they had a great time and moved on despite me asking for a review and my site following up with review reminders. That is the damage that murders my business exponentially. Only other option is join the conglomerate and raise my rates 35% to be listed at the top of their system. That will work for a little while until 20 other guys give up 40% of their income to be ahead of me. It is self consuming until nobody can afford to be in this idiot game. They will starve and cut corners until they are cooked and are out of business. Anyways, I was really hurt to see the lack of reviews for December. I put a good bit of effort change things and it did not make any difference. Sucks.

I’m going to finish with an understanding of my perspective. I mostly love what I do. I chose this lifestyle and I fight to keep it within reasonable boundaries. This is not an easy business and nothing is getting easier any time soon. I want you to have the best experience. So much goes into each trip to make it possible. Much more goes into it to make it a great trip. When you book a charter with me, we are going into the ocean in my boat. For me, it is my happy place. I love it. Magic carpet ride to limitless adventures. For others….that 9X25 space is a prison cell for excessive heat, brutal cold, motion sickness, irrational fears and a dozen other hidden terrors and forms of torture that I discover at some point. Within that context, I have to teach some critically important things for you to learn and replicate on your own to have measurable success. It is not for everybody, but it kinda is designed to be for nearly everybody. I have had many charters that I felt those that were on board were not aware they were going on a boat for the day. I realize people are different now and more indoor oriented than ever. I think it is fair to say most people have completely lost the connection to being out of doors for more than an hour. I have almost no success in having my guests arrive wearing the right clothes, or thought of bringing a towel, thought of the things their kids need to be happy etc. I have all of the ingredients to make your trip go well. I can’t control the weather or conditions, but I can adjust on it. I try to tell my unprepared group how to do things better while the trip is under way. It generally does not work. More effective is me adjusting the trip down. Each trip has a certain amount of potential that I am aware of. Every time I dial an adjustment against my plan we move further away from what was designed to happen. That is fine. That situation will always happen. That is part of my job to figure out. I exceed most of my guests expectations. I want to hit plan A, B and C. So many times we just touch A and go right to plan D because of issues. If we could spend more time in A and B in 2026 my brain would be happy. If you could spend 5 minutes or less to write a nice Google review after your trip, I am usually cleaning your catch for 30 minutes to an hour when we get back to the dock. That would be the perfect time to do it and it would make my heart happy. I would sleep better at night knowing I have a chance to not be swallowed up by the superior charter booking/advertising machine.