The Hubbard 1/2 day fishing trip out of Madeira Beach, FL, was terrible. Although the crew were friendly and helpful, the fishing experience itself was a huge disappointment.
First, the trip was supposed to be 1 hour out, 3 hours of fishing, and 1 hour in. Instead , it was almost 1 1/2 hours out, almost the same traveling back, and only about 2 hours and 15 minutes of fishing. On top of that, the fishing time was significantly abbreviated because the captain kept moving the boat every 15 minutes, forcing everyone to pull up their lines and wait another 10 minutes while he found another spot to fish. The reason he was moving the boat so often was because most of the people on the boat were not catching much, if anything. At one point, the captain actually had the audacity to say there were plenty of fish but they just were being too finicky and weren't biting. In 40 years of fishing, I've never heard any boat captain offer such a lame excuse. I guess they must have had lunch already and just weren't hungry.
The second issue we had was the bait they sold us. We bought 5 dozen live shrimp (for four of us) on their suggestion that live bait may work better with some of the fish we would encounter. On the ride out, we kept our bucket in the water cooler as instructed to keep the shrimp fresh. However, when we opened the bucket to bait our hooks for the first time, at least half of the shrimp were lifeless already. After an hour of fishing, virtually all of them were dead or close to it. Hard to catch anything with live bait that's not alive. Not that anybody was catching much fish even with the generic squid chunks, but paying for live bait that is almost dead when you go to use it is deceptive and rather dishonest.
Last point. The marketing for this 1/2 day trip made you think everyone was gong to catch at least a handful of fish. They didn't promise dozens, but they did say that they do everything to make sure the customer goes home with a handful of fish. That's just deceptive marketing because most of the people on the boat went home with either just one or two fish or none at all. When we got off the boat, only about 20 (out of 60) passengers lined up to have their fish filleted. Only a couple left without having their catch filleted. Our group of four had only two fish to show for our 5 hour, $200+ trip. That's inexcusable. The simple reality was that there were not a lot of fish out there and whatever fish there were could not be located by the captain. I can appreciate that the Hubbard company and employees need to make a living, but scamming people like this is not acceptable. If you know there are not a lot of fish to be caught, cut the price you charge or give a refund if people don't catch at least 3 or 4 fish.