Starting a Fishing Guide Business

Building A Fishing Charter From The Ground Up

This month marks one year from the start of our kick-off into the business of running a fishing charter here in Clearwater, Florida. It’s been a wild first year, but it’s helped us gain a feel for the liquidity of the business, and we’ve realized the naysayers were wrong all along! It’s a very lucrative business! 

First Year Numbers

We’ve grossed a little over 30,000 this year. We’ve spent a lot too, but we’re very happy with that number, considering it was our first year and we were shut down for about three months due to Covid-19… three VERY busy months for us. We also had to account for starting mid the high season of last year, and all of the kinks there were to work out with our new endeavor. Things were not seamless! But, with that being said, we were still able to count on it for some substantial income, which was a big deal. We are confident that the next 12 months will be fairly consistent, and our target is to make $50,000 which is very doable.

Something else to take into account is that we are not spending any money on marketing, advertising, none! We work with a booking agency, Fishing Booker, and tons of business has come from that one resource alone. It took a lot of the front end work out of finding customers to market to. You could consider the 10% they take, our marketing budget. Well worth it. 

Strategy When Starting Your Own Boat Charter

We started this business slightly backward if you will. We purchased a boat. Then hired a captain to run trips with. That is how William, my husband, gained the last bit of his water time in order to apply for his captain’s license.

If there’s any advice to give, it would be to dive into it. You can easily keep your day job, or a part-time job, while putting all of the pieces together in order to start your own charter. Get one thing done at a time. Save your money, and put into place the two key things necessary to make it work, 1) A Boat  2) Time on the water. If you have both of these things set, you can move onto getting your captain’s licenses taken care of quickly. Then start on situating the logistical and legal things you’ll need to run your fishing charter business. 

When you are ready, create listings for your business on any platform you can. Examples would be your own website, Google & Fishing Booker. Work on your reviews as a first priority. Don’t put money into marketing or advertising until you’ve proven yourself and have created some credibility for your business. We are just now looking at some paid advertising and marketing options, a year after starting, and it still feels a little premature. We have to be able to take on the work we get, and we are booked pretty constantly in the high season, so we don’t want to overload ourselves, which is a great issue to have. We’re more inclined to run specials during the down season and advertise during that time in order to drive more business in then we would normally get from the natural flow of things. 

Bottom Line

We are beyond happy with our charter business, and we look forward to the years ahead of us being full of efforts to grow this into something bigger. If you are interested in starting your own charter business, or any business for that matter, just start! Take your first step in that direction.

We wish you luck! Thanks for reading!

Best,
Sara Parker
Co-Owner of Rebel Coast Charters