Big game 90

Tookt 4 friends from Las Vegas with me and what a lousy trip. The Captain was an hour late from the start, then allowed his «friends» to board first, even though we were sitting out for 3 hours waiting. Lousy bait, then the captain states we are 150 miles out but want to try and catch some seabass for everyone so we are heading in to fish at La Jolla. Well we made it there in 4 hours. Obviously we were not 150 miles offshore. Then when we went to go in the boat would not start. Was charged a fuel charge, lousy food, no mates to be found, Mike in his typical «I am a bad ass Mood» and you can imagine my 3 friends have never gone again on any boat. You could pay for my trip and pay me, and I would never go on this boat ever again. I now go exclusely on the American Angler. Want to talk about a classy organization that are a fish catching machine??? Even called and spoke with Irv and tried to post on their site and Irv would not allow me to post as he stated via E-​Mail he would address this himself. I never asked for anything in return as I knew it was lousy food, lousy service and no fish. Of the 3 fish that were caught on this trip, they rotted in the RSW. I think in this case it stands for Rejected Shit Water.
If your smart you will never go on this boat.

Overcharged happened on the two trips I’ve been on. Snotty crew.

Took a 5 day on this boat in September. I should have done my homework and researched reviews about this boat on fishing boards, but i jumped at the price which semed significantly cheaper than the other long range boats. Well, i later learned they nickel and dime you to death… more like dollar and 5 dollar you to death. The meal plan was not included in the price and ran an additional 160 per Person. That wouldnt have been so bad if the food was ½ as good as the better long range boats, but it was pretty much sub Denny’s quality. Then there was them furl surcharge…$ 25 per day which is outrageous. Even the best long range boats at this time are charging $ 15 max per day Fuel Surcharge. As the other first poster reported, you have to pay for every drink of water… it runs $ 2 per little bottle or for a soda, $ 3 per can of domestic beer. They have no free drinking water or ice machine on board with ice available for your own drinks like other boats, and if you want to keep hydrated, you are forced to buy those little bottles of water at $ 2 a pop. So your galley tab ends up being quite pricey if you have never been on this boat before and don’t bring a couple of cases of water like some do. Oh yeah, they offer to clean your fish for you as well… in Mexican Waters which no other boats do… at $ 5 a fish. I actually thought this was a decent service, but only if you gill and gut… otherwise they put the filleted pieces in bags, in milk crates and into the hold. Well, im glad i just gilled and gutted because at the end of the trip, the fillets in the bags looked like they all leaked and water from the spray brine fish hold got into many of the bags… so those folks got back fillets «brined» from the fish hold spray brine water which is nasty.
The worst part about this whole trip was they didnt put enough bait on for the length of the trip. I mean, seriously, I’ve been on ¾ day trips with more live bait than this 5 day trip. thats how cheap and tight they were with the bait. They loaded the bait while the captain was giving the galley seminar so everyone was forced to be in the galley and there attention was diverted. I kept my eye open and they were slow loading the bait scoops and it didn’t even take 10 minutes if that. I thought, maybe i missed something and the slammers were already filled, but nope. So, from day 1, we were fricking conserving bait and were asked to recycle our dead bait from day 2 on.
I know, this was a bad year for bait for the whole fleet, because a lot of boats had bait roll and die after the first day, But not us… our bait didn’t roll because the bait tanks were so sparsely filled in the first place. Having been on numerous 5 to ten day trips on the better boats like the RP, AA, Shogun, the amount of live bait they started with was probably enough for maybe 1 day without chumming. This affected the whole trip. When there was a jig strike, the crew didn’t throw out any chum until we saw what the troll anglers had on since there were a lot of stops for rat, 3 – 4 lb. yellowtail. But amongst those stops, there were a few stops where we got decent troll strikes for schoolie 15 – 25 lb, yellowfin, and some 30 lb. plus albacore, but by the time the trollers got the fish to the boat and the crew started chumming (as this whole trip was a bait conservation trip), the school was gone. This changed the whole feel of a 5 day trip to a series of desperation overnights, because it was all run and gun trolling and then throwing iron on the slide. The crew could never really bring a school to the boat unless a paddy happened to be loaded, but they were loaded with rats and the only quality fish were from blind jig strikes nowhere near kelp paddies. Since we had such little bait to chum with, we never got the better fish schools to the boat.
If the fishing was better, which it could have been if we had enough bait, I wouldn’t have minded the mediocre, overpriced food and drinks, but it wasn’t and it was because the landing operator was too cheap to buy the proper bait to give even a chance at a decent trip. On top of this, the boat was filthy by long range standards. The bunks were run down… dank, and smelly. Nothing youd want to sleep on for more than a night. If you expect a stateroom, theres maybe 2 or 3 and the rest are like overnight boats. The deckhands were pretty inconsistent as well. A couple couldnt gaff a fish worth a damn.
Theres not a lot of «open“reports about this boat and yes, this boat does have its loyal following of regulars, but honestly, i get the feeling they are deadhead friends of the captain or crew… thats just my impression. Because seriously, who in their right mind would pay full price, even the so callled «discount» price to fish a boat that is so cheap, they wont even load enough bait for one day’s fishing… and this was a 5 day. Save up your money for the quality operations because going on this boat was a cheap, money grubbing waste of time.