Guide recommendations for Key West

[The Ocho]

Doing my annual trip to Key West and looking for recommendations for a quality guide for a day trip to do inshore/nearshore or target mahi. I have had pretty poor experiences the last few years using fishbooker and don't want to repeat it again.

 

[Concrete Pete]

Good luck man. It’s tough down there. Seems like anyone can call themselves a guide. I’d honestly just check the Google reviews.

 

[doomtrpr_z71]

Piner wahoo

American Allegiance Charters

American Allegiance Charters in Big Pine Key (Lower Key, Key West) provides services such as; charter trips, fishing, sunset boat rides & custom skiff boats.

www.american-allegiance-charters.com

 

[The Ocho]

Agreed. I've gone the past 2 years and the running joke has been Key West good...worst guide we had was a 4.8 out of 5 and the guy was trash. No bait when we got on the boat and spent 90 minutes looking for bait before going back to the marina and buying bait...pretty sure he was high as a kite as well

Good luck man. It’s tough down there. Seems like anyone can call themselves a guide. I’d honestly just check the Google

 

[The Ocho]

Booked with KoKo charters for one of the days. Will let you know how it goes

 

[Concrete Pete]

Agreed. I've gone the past 2 years and the running joke has been Key West good...worst guide we had was a 4.8 out of 5 and the guy was trash. No bait when we got on the boat and spent 90 minutes looking for bait before going back to the marina and buying bait...pretty sure he was high as a kite as well

I am going to adopt that saying. ‘Keys good’. It seems like that fishery has really good guys who you have to book months ahead of time and the rest should really be landscaping.

There’s no in between.

The kiss of death for me is when a guide says ‘It’s not necessarily about catching fish. It’s the experience’. If I hear that, I know I’m basically going on an expensive boat ride.

I don’t book anyone without an instagram of recent fish pics and a lot of 5 star reviews.

Some guys will straight up swindle you and expect a 20% tip.

 

[JakkBauer]

Islamorada in my opinion has a better stock of guides.

 

[Big7]

Islamorada in my opinion has a better stock of guides.

Indeed

 

[DynamicDennis]

I have not done key west, but Two Conchs out of Marathon is top notch. At first they were a little sketchy, but once they realized we knew how to fish it was a blast. Even raced a boat to the cut, that big boat can move.