Key West Pro Guides — Local services in Stock Island

I'm writing this after fishing with KWPG but also after writing a review on TripAdvisor ("Highs and Lows" the title) that the owner of KWPG responded to but that Tripadvisor gives me no opportunity to address (for 3 more months). KWPG does an excellent job of customer interaction and service. Although the owner (Captain Paul) is very modest when he says "there were zero attempts to 'sell you anything'....." KWPG is much more efficient at this than other charter services. I received several e-mails using phrases in reference to my charter captain like "he can catch fish in a parking lot" and in reference to KWPG "we assure you of memories of a lifetime". I admired the effort - and the gentleman (Captain Roc) writing the e-mails - and booked.

The long and short of the trip itself was nothing much was caught. The fish that were caught were a few "grunts", all 1lb or less. As a note, this is the one thing I told both captain Roc and my boat captain I didn't want to fish for. I also said I didn't care what we DID fish for, they were the experts. Other than the spot with the snapper, we went to one other spot where neither my party, nor the captain himself, could get a bite. Oh, well, as I said in my tripadvisor review, if fishing were a guarantee it would be called "catching".

My real amusement with KWPG came after I read Capt Paul's response. To be fair, Paul responds to nearly every tripadvisor review, but importantly it's "how" he responds to reviews less than 4 or 5 stars that struck me - somewhere in his opening paragraph is a statement about "I'm in no way defensive....." but then the next 2000 words he writes are thinly veiled to suggest that the reviewer's account of their own experience was wrong. Fascinating. The more I thought about this the more I actually admired Captain Paul. You see, he strongly encourages customers to leave a review on tripadvisor. He'll send you a free T-shirt, in fact. And to prevent another occurence of Paul's extreme modesty, let's also just say he's "hopeful" the review will be 5 stars. Did I mention the free T-shirt? Then, if one leaves a review less than 5 (or perhaps 4) stars he generally responds attempting to discredit the reviewer. It's sort of the customer's fault for their less than "5 star" experience. Read the tripadvisor reviews (and responses) yourself noting the reviews that are 3 stars or less.

But, again, this is all masterful marketing as far as I'm concerned. Why? Because, unlike other Key West charter services, Captain Paul has put in the work to "concentrate" a large number of reviews that are very postitive (recall, he "encourages" - putting it mildly - 5 star reviews). And for those that aren't, he cleverly writes a good-old-boy, homespun response that leads the casual reader to think the original reviewer was out to lunch. After all, how could it possibly be that a man so unabashedly outspoken on providing "5 star" service could ever have an employee that doesn't, or have a customer that doesn't catch fish?

And what all of the above boils down to is this: Capt Paul is running a good and very legitimate business. To read tripadvisor, you'd think he's clearly the best - if not only - charter service in Key West. Well, he's certainly not the only. And as far as "best" goes, you don't stay in business unless you (fairly regularly) produce fish for customers. Were KWPG the only service doing this, they'd be the "only" service in Key West. And if not catching fish isn't the captain's fault, then you can not catch fish with any charter. And since KWPG can't assure you that you WILL catch fish - which would be absurd - then KWPG really offers no clear advantage over others. All the "marketing" on their website about agents booking trips, etc. is nonsense. I didn't book with KWPG because I wasn't dealing with an agent, I booked to catch fish. I didn't. And had I went with another charter, I may have, or may not have. Summary: my advice is to go with the best value you find, not necessarily who has the most reviews on...

This is an honest review. We went on 3 fishing charters with Key West Pro Guides and we will not be going with them again. The first one was with Captain Ryan. He took us to a lot of different fishing spots, he was nice, put bait on all of our lines and worked hard to ensure we had a good trip. The only problem was that he didn't answer his phone the night before. We originally told the guy who books all these trips that we wanted to fish with lures and he only ended up having one on his boat. Your fishing desires must not get shared with the captains because he flat out said he does not fish with lures at all. He didn't have anything prepared because we couldn’t get a hold of him the night before. Overall, it was a good trip. The second time, we went with a guy that was very friendly and listened to what we wanted to do with the fishing trip. The only issue was that his boat broke down twice. Luckily, we weren't far away from the marina so it ended up being okay. Overall a good trip. This last time, we went with Capt. Dave Brucker and it was NOT a good experience. We planned our ENTIRE stay around this fishing trip. We specifically wanted to go to the Merquesas Keys this time. We flew out from the pacific northwest and brought a friend so it was a big deal. He called us the morning of saying he didn't think we should go there and tried to cancel the trip altogether. We were really disappointed but decided to fish locally. We had run into another guide at a bait shop the day before who said he was also taking people out to the Merquesas Keys the following day and wished us luck so it really seems like we could have gone. Dave did take us out locally but complained and cursed at us the entire time. He cursed at us for getting his lures bit off by fish, the way we were trying to hook fish and for going through the bait fish. He made comments like "an 8 hour fishing day is so long I don't know why people book these" and "at least the time is passing". He had a sour attitude the whole time. We drove around the long way to every fishing spot. We only fished for a total of maybe 3 hours. He took us back to the marina an hour and a half early AND made us pay full price. He said if we didn't, it would come out his pocket. He also smoked the entire time we were out there and got burning ash on our arms. Overall, a terrible experience. The captain was clearly trying to waste time on the water and drag the day out because he obviously didn't want to be there. Jokes on us because we spent a ton of money on this trip, including hard earned PTO, to go to the Marquesas with a captain who had no interest in being out there and who was a total jerk. We would have been better off just fishing the bridges. We won't be going...

Dear Paul and the Key West Pro Guides Team,

I hope this message finds you well. I wanted to take a moment to share my feedback on the fishing trip we took on Dec 4th for my 40th birthday celebration, which was planned with a group of 7 people. As an avid fisherman from the Northeast, I was particularly excited about the backwater Keys fishing trip and had high expectations for our day on the water. Given that I was bringing such a large group, I appreciated your assurance that Key West Pro Guides specializes in managing multi-boat trips for large groups, including past experiences with high-profile sports teams and retailers.

Unfortunately, while some aspects of the trip were enjoyable, our experience fell short in a few key areas.

Upon meeting the captains at the docks, we split our group onto two boats. I reiterated multiple times that we wanted to keep the group close-knit and enjoy the day together, but this wasn’t quite the case for our boat. The captain of the boat I was on immediately took us on a 2-hour hunt for bait, which involved chasing diving pelicans around islands and, later, asking other charter boats for bait. After much time spent on the hunt, we finally anchored over a wreck and fished for about an hour, landing a handful of snapper. All told, I’d estimate we spent only about two hours actually fishing, with the rest of the time being a long and expensive boat ride on a cold, rough day.

By contrast, the other boat in our group had a much different experience. Their captain had prepared by getting bait earlier in the morning, and they were able to start fishing almost immediately. According to my friends, the captain was personable, gave excellent instruction, and managed to put them on productive fishing spots all day despite the less-than-ideal weather conditions. They were able to enjoy a much more fulfilling day on the water, and I feel their experience was closer to what we had hoped for.

While I understand that conditions and circumstances can sometimes affect a fishing trip, I do feel that the disparity in experiences between the two boats was significant and disappointing. The promise of a seamless, enjoyable day for a large group was not fully met, and I was left feeling that the day was more about boat rides than fishing.

I wanted to share this feedback with you so that you can consider how to improve future multi-boat group trips, particularly in ensuring that all boats are given a fair opportunity for productive fishing time and that expectations align more closely with the actual experience.

I appreciate your attention to this matter and hope it will help in providing better experiences for...