Charter in the St Augustine area - Updated Post trip info

[zload]

Looks like the wife and I will be staying over in St Augustine for a week in late June, thinking about doing a mid-week near/off shore charter as I'm not taking the boat this time. Anybody fished with a good charter over there? Not really looking for a sportsfisher level charter boat but something with a head onboard would be nice for her. Will likely just be the two of us but max of 4.

Not really wanting ICW charter as in her words "we can catch trout and redfish anytime" and we didn't really care for fishing in the ditch last time.

[silverking]

A short drive south of SA, Capt. Glyn Austin in Sebastian is a great choice. He uses two different boats and his nearshore stuff focuses on cobia, tarpon, grouper, AJs, etc. If it's windy he can put you on some snook and gator trout.

Have done numerous articles with Glyn. Very knowledgeable and laid-back. I highly recommend him.

http://goingcoastalcharters.com

[thebpac]

I highly recommend Brian Walker. I have been with him close to a dozen times. He can put you on just about any species you are looking for. He catches a lot of Cobia in the summer.


http://www.walkercharters.com/default.aspx

[zload]

Thanks for the input, Sebastian is a bit too far this time SK. Talking to some other folks I know that have fished over there and got a couple other leads I’m checking on as well. Will post an after action repirt assuming all goes as planned trip wise. With my luck there will be a monsoon/sharknado that week

[silverking]

No worries. Checked out the distance after my post and 2+ hours is more of a hike than I remembered, especially for an early morning trip. Sebastian is a cool spot if you ever do get down there and a consistent one for big snook and some real gator trout.

Hope you and the wife get on 'em!

[zload]

As promised, posting an after action report for our 6/27 offshore trip off of St Augustine.

We fished with Capt. Adam Petnuch of ReelDream Fishing Charters out of St. Augustine Beach. Adam is young (ballpark 24-25 years old) and pretty new to the charter boat world. On top of that he readily admits to being a "Yankee" from Chicago. He said he caught a lot of flack for being a Yankee but that at the end of the day most of his clients would say that a Yankee put them on their best fishing trip ever. He started out chartering with a 22' CC and is on his 3rd boat now. HIs gear all seemed to be in good condition, no Penn Internationals to be found but everything worked, he said he went with the Ugly Stick Tiger rods with SS guides because newbies would destroy rods reeling up to and past the swivels (been there and had that happen) and I would guess most charters use similar gear.

Honestly the boat is what attracted me to Capt. Adam as I didn't want to be droning around forever on a diesel boat and I wanted something comfortable for my wife. His Grady White is more or less a smaller version of a Sportsfisher style boat with the large aft cockpit deck, a private head and it moved pretty well with the twin 250 OBs.

We met at a local public boat ramp and when I got there at 6:30 he and his mate were tied up and waiting on us. He lives 4 minutes from the ramp (I saw the boat/trailer parked out by his house when checking out the ramp earlier in the week) and he said it was way cheaper to store the boat at his house as compared to a marina.

He asked what my expectations were and I told him no AJs and that we were looking for table fish not sport or trophy. He was like "no problem I'll put you on the fish". We headed out of the inlet to a beautiful day on the water.

Heading out

Once we cleared the inlet he headed out to about 120' at a brisk 35mph, water was not slick but nice gentle swells, NOAA called for 2'-3' with a 7 second period, I think they over estimated the wave height for once.

I went up to he helm and asked him about fuel burn and asked him to show me his bottom machine when we got to some good hard bottom areas as I don't see that too much where we fish in the gulf. He wanted to know where and what we fished for and about my boat etc. He had done some diving around Horseshoe so was sort of familiar with the area. He was very open about his gear and info and had no problems showing me anything I asked about. He basically said his Cmore GPS chip was the bomb and that when we got out a little further he would show me why. I made it clear I was no offshore expert and advice/guidance was welcome.

First stop was for Bee Liners and I don't think we made a single drop without pulling up a fish, limited out on them and also picked up some nice trigger fish as well as some sand perch which got put in the bait well for grouper bait. Once we got our limit we headed for the deeper hard bottom and started out about 140'. Current was running pretty strong so we drifted rather than anchoring up, we tend to do that when snapper fishing in Mexico Beach so I was good with that. Bite was slower and I missed a couple of bites getting used to much heavier gear and weights than I was accustomed to, I was fishing with a Penn Senator 6/0 and 32oz of lead, he kept my wife on a dropper loop snapper rig. Water was very clear but not a lot of floating weeds etc. We were hoping to spot a mahi or cobia being curious but never saw anything and may have been a little too close in for the best mahi action. Fist time my wife reeled up and caught the sinker to keep it from hitting the deck or mate he was like OK you guys have done this before, told him nothing drove me crazier than to see someone drop a 10oz sinker on my gelcoat after I told them 3 times not to do that.

If we didn't get a bite within about 15 minutes Capt. Adam would move us to another location, sometimes a few hundred feet up to a mile or so. He called me up and showed me his C-more graph with was basically a highly detailed sonar map that he used in conjunction with his sounder. It was like looking at a picture of the bottom and then he told he also dove most of his spots so he really knew what the bottom looked like. He related that he had shot a grouper last year but it came unpinned, he is pretty sure a client caught it this spring as the grouper has a scar right where he hit it with the spear.

I got a good bite and reeled up and thought I had caught Moby Dick. He was jumping around the boat, laughing and cheering me on as I fought the fish. At one time I heard him say I think a shark got your grouper and you have the shark hooked good because a grouper would have given up by now. After a long fight I got the 45# AJ to the surface and they gaffed him, made sense as I have never had an AJ give up like grouper normally do once they get away from the bottom. After telling him no AJ's at the dock I "accused" him of putting me on his best AJ hole and of course he thought that was funny but assured me that he wouldn't do that. He wanted to know why I didn't want the AJ and I basically said too much fight for a fish I don't eat, he agreed but said the tourist love them. A few minutes later I hooked up again and started moving the fish up only to start losing line on a locked down drag. Pretty sure it was a grouper this time as the line was really frayed, and I think he rocked me up quick.

After taking a water break and a short boat reposition I dropped again and got another bite, this time I got it off the bottom a little quicker and eventually boated a 36" gag weighing in at about 25#. Did some high fives around the boat and my wife pulled in some more trigger fish, a strawberry grouper as well as an ARS. Also got a 16" black sea bass in the mix which looked like a monster. Red went back of course and my wife said she wanted nothing to do with a grouper or an AJ

We stopped on the way back in and picked up some porgy which my wife thought was a blast as they bit like crazy. Seas were like this all day long.

Got back to the ramp at about 4:30pm, Capt. Adam and crew took pictures, cleaned the fish and bagged them up for me and we headed back to the condo to vacuum bag them and get some dinner. My wife was whipped between the fish and the heat but excited about the trip overall. Not many women ask for an offshore charter for their anniversary trip so I caught a good one 35 years ago.

We had a great time and enjoyed our trip on Capt. Adams boat. I told my wife to enjoy the trip and any fish would just be icing on the cake. The kid is hungry, personable, very respectful with a lot of sirs and ma'am's tossed around while giving us instructions and seemed to be willing to do just about anything he could to make us happy.

On the way back in he put his mate at the helm and came back and sat down with us, asked if we were happy with the boat, gear, mate and could he do anything differently to make it a more enjoyable trip. He apologized for the one fish that was able to pull drag on me, said he was going to replace drag washers etc. on that reel but it was a really good fish. I was pretty impressed for such a young guy with not a lot of experience. He clearly understood that as the owner he had to make clients happy which is pretty refreshing compared to some charters I've been on where it seemed that the Capt. was just marking time until it was time to head back to the dock.

I'd use Capt. Adam again without question.

[FTReelty]

Nice report. Thanks for sharing!

[silverking]

Great report. Glad you two had such a fun trip. Also a lot of good tips there for how to run a successful charter operation.