Fished on 8/29/04
Water Temperature: ?
Water Clarity: ?
Seas: 2 -3ft.
Weather: 80+ degrees, Sunny, with a warm breeze.
Fishing_for: Blues
Boat: H.c.
captain: ??
Report:
It's been some time since I've gone on a party boat. I guess I forgot why I don't like them, but the experience on Saturday brought it all back.
I went on this party boat with four friends. We all had joined the bluefish tournament and we thought that if we found a boat that went to "the race" we would have a fair chance at the big prize. In our group all but one of us caught at least one blue,... nothing big. No one on the boat caught anything that would be considered a contender in the tournament. I've caught the same size fish in the harbor at New Haven. I was not impressed with any of sizes of the Blues that were caught by the anglers on the boat.
On the way home we talked about the trip, we agreed that in comparison to the amount of anglers on the boat(It was a full boat and every station was taken) only a few anglers caught fish. Most of the anglers spent their time getting untangled. (I'm sure if there were less people on the boat we would have all caught more fish and had less tangles.) But we all noticed that as the boat got loaded the crew began to joke about the amount of tangles they were going to experience on the trip today. We were not ready for that experience.
My team and I were new on the boat so we asked questions and found that some of the working crew were friendly and helpful while others were very rude.
At the end of the trip some of the crew members went around encouraging the anglers to be generous with their tips and I guess that was OK. Two crew members cleared an area in the back of the boat and they set that area to clean the fish. The anglers lined up and had their fish cleaned,.. the crew members after cleaning the fish would tell the anglers what the charge was and encouraged again,... the angler,... to be generous with the tip. Some anglers gave more and some anglers gave less,.. then one angler was ridiculed because he gave what he could and the crew members felt it wasn't enough, and that turned some anglers off. At that point some anglers decided to clean their own fish.
While on the boat I could hear many of the anglers expressing their disgust with the treatment by some of the crew and that more could have been done so that more anglers caught fish that day.
I'm sure the crew heard that before because they joked about that too.
As for me it wasn't so much that I only caught one blue that day, I know that with fishing it's a hit or miss. I was more dissappointed with the size of the fish caught and mostly I was upset by the way the SOME crew members treated some of the anglers through the course of the day.
As for my team they say Hel-No not again to the H.-C.
Sorry crew,... that act needs to be cleaned up. Concerns and treatment of the anglers needs to be address.
I'm sure they have had better days on the H.C. and that they will continue to run as is. Good luck.
I'll go back to my 15 footer,... to the New Haven Harbor and with $20 dollars I can fish the whole day to catch the same size fish.
My total cost at the H.C. for the day was $59 dollars plus the trip to get there.
There are 2 followups to this report click here to see them
To add a remark to this report click here.
Saltwater Fishing Home Page 
