FishingBooker

Captain was not familiar with good fishing sites. Put crew in harms way by anchoring in the middle of the canal. Got very close to being hit by a large diving boat. Boat was not seaworthy to navigate in open sea on 2-3 foot waves. I would not recommend this boat.

We watched Capt Brandon fish, we were only allowed to reel in his catch.

Booked a 5hr charter out of Cabo, with listed fees ($20/ea fishing licenses, $15 live bait). Paid owner of charter at top of dock total amount due for 2 people, owner left and another worker walked us down to boat. Once on boat he says we owe $15 for live bait which we already paid. Calls owner who says we did not pay for live and the $15 went to a "dock fee" which was not listed on the confirmation email and no live bait. Totally a lie and deceptive practice.

I Told them we weren't paying them any more money, and demanded them to return the money we paid which they did. We didn't go fishing, Later called fishing booker who made me jump through hoops a bit but eventually return my deposit. This is the only reason I'm giving them two stars and not one. I received messages from the fishing Charter saying we stole his licenses which we never saw, they probably never even bought them. He went on to threaten that he was going to come to our hotel and collect the money.

I contacted fishing Booker and told them to look at the messages and they should not list this type of person on their platform. They said they would look into it. 10 days later there still listing this charter. They obviously do not care.

Booking the experience based on reviews was very easy, but the fishing experience itself was horrible. Starting off with leaving the dock about 20 min late, once we left we had everyone pass us, even pontoon boats, might have seen a kayak pass us, had our hopes up based on all the reviews however the captain that was on all the reviews wasn't even our captain. For hours we trolled, didn't explore other options since trolling wasn't catching anything. And when we finally caught something it was a 9 in tuna and we had to keep our reels inside the rocket launcher. The bait was minimal. Captain used a ballyhoo slice it in thin layers and used 1 ballyhoo for 5 lines out for the rest of the day. Towards the last hour they decided to come closer to the beach, right off the inlet where we caught an ok sized barracuda. For $975 and a 20%gratuity that wasn't included I would have preferred to spend $100 on bait walk to the inlet and catch fish there.

Great experience with FishingBooker. Super easy to use and decide.

I'd spoken with Troy (management?) the night prior to taking customers out. Troy did not advise that the head was out on the boat we were to use. We only learned after being underway.
Significantly, even more because I'd prepaid (in cash—Kinn's asks for pmt. Up front) including 4/2day licenses. Upon the finish of our trip (w/embarrassing boat handling)…. It was clear that -no- fishing licenses had been prepared. The DNR was shorted as the young man running the boat advised that they "only needed one". That excess money merely went to Kinn's (or somewhere else unknown to me). I love to use charter fishing for entertainment. These guys will get no referrals or come-backs from me.

We booked a deep sea charter with promises of big game fish and the equipment to catch them with. Not the case at all. The trip was in the bay only, and the equipment was so substandard it couldn't catch goldfish. We notified fishingbooker.com about being charged for one trip and taking another, no response. The only thing we received was a survey to see if we had a happy or sad face about our experience. Continued to follow up but again no response. We were taken for a boat ride. :(

My fishing charter was great. However using the fishbooker to actually book the experience was a pain. I first made a reservation with one captian only to get a message an hr later letting me know he was already booked, even tho I already paid a deposit. So i asked for a refund, and he set the refund in motion. I went to a 2nd that had openings for the day only for the samething to happen. Paid for deposit, waited a couple hrs before being told he is not free that day.

Finally I booked for the third time, paid deposit, waited, and I took it on myself to reach out to the captian and make sure he was that he was good for that day to take my group and I out. He contacted me shortly after and said yes. We chatted for a bit via fishbooker and everything seemed to be in order. THE DAY OF THE TRIP me, my wife, and my teenage brother and sister all excited to go fishing together, so we get to the dock 30 mins earlier than the meet time, so we can meet the captian and get going only to be told the captian already left... thankfully the guy I met wanted to help us and called the captian, and yup he was already gone. Thankfully again he helped us and directed us to another boat and we got another captian and set off.

I dont know how to make the website better other than captians updating their status maybe via an app. But the website did put us onto a good trip despite all the miscommunication.

FB operates most closely related to an automated travel agency. What this overseas company has done is create an algorithm that advertises fishing charters and in exchange they charge the fishing charter a percentage of the trip fee and tells the customer it is a "deposit" for the trip. They do forward that fee to the Captain if the customer is a no show. FB then uses a lot of those funds to dominate the advertising on Google, thus you see them first.

To list on FB you have to pick a percentage of your trip fee that you are willing to give up. The higher the percentage that you give up the higher you are placed on the listings. Thus if you search a certain locale you may well see listings for captains from out of the area because they have agreed to give up a larger portion of their fee. They are either going to have to travel to you or they are going to ask you to travel to them.

When you book with FB there is no human interaction, it is all artificial intelligence that books you trip. The captain gets a text alert and an email stating that you have requested the trip. FB gives the captain 24 hours to answer the request or it expires. On a rare occasion and IF someone is working at FB the captain will sometimes get a phone call from them asking about short term notice request. BEWARE of any listings on FB that offer "INSTANT BOOK". Very few if any Captains use FB's calendar as their primary calendar. There is a good chance that if you use INSTANT BOOK, you will not get the Captain that you are requesting. I know of Captains that use that feature and they often use unlicensed boats to fill your trip because they were already booked that day and just did not update their calendar.

The captain that you are requesting gets limited information until and unless he accepts the trip. Their internal messaging system works well but it is highly monitored. If your captain is on the road or on the water and wants to talk, he cannot send you his number through the messaging system because that message will get blocked by their filters. Here's the kicker... it has been my experience that FB will only allow a captain to be signed in to their system from a single device at a time. So if he/she is away from home but left the laptop signed in, you cannot sign into the system to see or respond to the customer's message. The same goes for trip request, they are difficult to respond to at certain times. Oh and as someone that makes them money it has been difficult to get any answers to the tech issues from them. So the customer service is bad on both ends of this deal.

FB is a static listing. As a listed captain I cannot simply go on and change my listing. I have to either write something up or ask for an edit and wait for them to go in and edit the listing. So if a departure time changes or a boat goes down making that public on this system is not as easy as writing this review.

Again know that the "deposit" you are paying them is their fee for the booking service. The captain does not see that money. I have not had any customers complain to me about not getting the deposit refunded but I have had to get involved for a couple of them.

Overall I believe that they have been good from the Captain side simply because they spend so much money advertising. They are certainly planting the seed of fishing in the minds of some that may not have existed. However from the customer side I could not imagine using a service like this. In my life I used Expedia one time to book a room and it was a horrible experience. I, like you should use this service as a lead, then get on the net and do further research, I can promise you that you will get a lot more out of personal interaction with someone that you are planning to do business with. Anytime that you put a third party into a business arrangement you are adding one more chance for confusion.