Article by Capt. Mark Sampson
Over the years, I’ve been contacted by a lot of folks looking for information on how to get into the charter fishing business. From young men looking for a first mate position, to seasoned captains inquiring about where to rent a boat slip in Ocean City, the questions are often as diverse as the individuals asking them. A while back, I was called by a fellow who explained that he’d been fishing out of Ocean City for a number of years and was contemplating getting a captains license, a bigger boat and making a career in the charter business. Like so many others, his biggest concern was how many charters I thought he would get during a typical summer season. The number of charters, of course, translates into gross income, so any projection someone can get on how many trips they might run will help with their financial planning. So, the bottom line is this fellow wanted to know how much money he was going to make.
The answer I gave was probably not the one he expected, and certainly not what he wanted to hear. I told him that if it’s money he wanted to make, he had better look for some other job because he’s not likely going to make much (if any) from buying a boat and going into the charter business. My comments were met with the question, “If there’s no money to be made, then how come there’s so many charter boats in Ocean City, and why is it that so many of them have been in business for so long?”
I realized that here was yet another fisherman who had been fooled by the great “charter boat illusion” that promises a life of fun times, sleek new boats, big fish and lots of money. Oh, if it could only be so! Unfortunately the charter business is not all that it appears. It’s certainly impressive to walk the docks at some of the larger marinas in town and see row after row of big, elaborate charter boats, many of which might have come at a cost of a million (or more) dollars. But as impressive as they are, such boats are not likely to be providing much return on investment to their owners. In fact many of them run in the “red” year after year and have little, if any, chance of actually “making money”, something that’s often OK with the owners who aren’t necessarily trying to turn a profit anyway. Owners of boats costing many hundreds of thousands of dollars are likely to be financially strong enough that they can own the boat whether they charter it out or not. It’s just that by putting it into charter service they can hire a crew to run and maintain it, and write it all off as a business at the end of the year.
While that might be a good deal for the rich guy who’s got a “real job” somewhere else that cranks out the big bucks, the average “Captain Joe” who wants to make a living running charters had better do some serious and very realistic number-crunching before he bites the bullet and buys a charter boat. Even if the vessel’s sticker price doesn’t hit six digits, the ever-present cash drain of maintenance and repair, slip fees, insurance, fuel, bait, tackle, ice, mate fees and equipment, can wipe away any hope of making a decent income owning a charter fishing boat.
The charter fishing illusion is perpetuated by the exciting, almost carnival-like show that unfolds daily during the summer at any of Ocean City’s busy marinas. Mornings start early as captains and mates prep their boats with bait, ice and other supplies before loading up their clients. Diesel engines fire up, lines are cast off and boats head out to sea, hopefully pointed toward big fish and lots of action. Late that afternoon they return, unload their catch, swap stories with other fishermen, wipe down their shiny gold reels, clean the boat, and get ready to do it all over again the next day. Every day offshore is interesting, exciting and filled with surprises. What fishing enthusiast wouldn’t want to be a part of it? The fun, the glamour, the fame, the glory - the illusion!
To really see what charter fishing is all about, one should spend some off-season time in the boatyard and watch the guys spending months getting their rigs ready for the upcoming season. Sanding, scraping, painting, fiberglassing, crawling around engine rooms and mucking through bilges. There’s not much glamour and excitement in all that. Oh yeah, and during all that there’s NO money coming in - it’s all going out!
Or watch a crew that just finished up from a long day of fishing trudge through the night making repairs, changing oil, rigging baits, cleaning up and basically doing whatever it takes to be ready to run their charter early the next morning. And as if fishing and maintaining the boat wasn’t enough, a running charter fishing operation also involves all the things that go along with operating most small businesses, including advertising and promotional work, evenings of following up on phone calls and emails, collecting deposits, scheduling, as well as good banking and bookkeeping practices.
From the sidelines, it might seem like owning and operating a charter fishing business is a fun and easy way to make lots of money, but that would be like concluding that farming is easy because all they ever see are farmers driving around in big fancy tractors. Ask anyone who has been somewhat successful at charter fishing and I’m sure most will tell you that, while there are certainly elements of “fun” associated with the job, “easy” and “profitable” are not the first words they’d use to describe what they do. Certainly someone with the right mix of business sense, mechanical skills, fishing ability and good customer relations might have a chance to succeed earning a living at it, but success stories in this business are much fewer than those about failures. And even though that’s not what my caller wanted to hear that day, that’s just the way it is in the charter boat business.
Captain Mark Sampson is an outdoor writer and captain of the charter boat “Fish Finder”.
