Would NOT recommend this guided fishing service to anyone. This by far the worst (and only negative) fishing experience I have ever had after deep sea fishing in four states. The owner/guide was friendly and accomodating on the phone but nothing like that in person. After checking in the day before our trip, we were then jerked around for almost a day about whether or not we'd be actually going...this had nothing to do with weather as it was a rare sunny, 65 degree day. I was left in limbo with four other passengers wondering if we'd be going fishing at all. When we arrived at the marina, we weren't greeted as paying customers....he didn't introduce himself, smile-anything. We introduced ourselves to him and were eager to get fishing and were completely taken aback by his unfriendly nature and unwillingness to talk to us at all. Darrel was annoyed and irritated to even be taking us out of the water and made the entire experience a horrible one. After being charged a pretty penny to fish the San Juan Islands, which we were greatly looking forward to, we fished not even one mile from the marina slip where he parks his fishing vessel....the entire time. You'd see more of the area on the ferry. Looking at the houses surrounding the marina was not the fishing experience we wanted, were described, or expected. The guide was not only rude and extremely ungracious the entire time, but proceeded to complain about his ongoing divorce a good portion of the time when he would talk to us, and spent most of his time on his cellphone. Sorry about your personal life, but not exactly what my family wanted to listen to. We have always had upbeat fishing guides who wanted to be on the fish and were excited to help their customers catch fish,...this one was anything but. After not moving the boat once in six hours, the only saving grace was we lucked out weather wise. We were never even given basic safety instructions regarding the location of lifejackets, which didn't seem to matter since we didn't go far at ALL, but we did have a young child aboard, so it seems like it would be a responsible thing to do. None of our party expects to be guaranteed to catch fish, but when you pay for a trip you hope for a positive experience regardless and this was not it. I hope to prevent others from making the mistake we did when booking this trip as Darrel obviously doesn't need the paying customers.
Eagle Point Charters has definitely lost repeat fishing customers as we were looking for someone local to take us and visiting family out a couple times each year. For now, we will keep looking and hopefully find a good recommendation of another charter business. read more