Went out on my first deep sea fishing trip today in South Padre. Went on one of the 5hour fishing trips offered here and we spent 2hrs on the boat going to the fishing spot, 1 hour actually fishing, and then 2hrs coming back. I'm disappointed and was expecting to fish for a couple hours. Is this normal or should I complain to the manager and try to book a trip elsewhere? Fishing was the thing I was looking forward to the most on this trip.

PS Any jetty fishing tips would be appreciated .

All charters calculate the travel time in the trip. I haven't been on one here in Texas, but the guys I worked with always booked 2 a year in Florida, and would never do one that wasn't an all day deal.

There were relatively inexpensive charters called "Party Boats" where you would have a bunch of people that you didn't know on one boat. My buddy and I went once and seemed to us we traveled more than fished.

It takes time to get to those deep spots in the Gulf.

that would be average

I knew they included travel time in the trip and they weren't offering an all day trip, I was just expecting to fish for more than one hour on a five hour trip I guess. There were about 15 on the boat but I'll never go on another one if that's the case.....waste of time and money. Thanks for the response .

You get what you pay for! That is completely normal. Save up, spend 4-500 and get a 5 hour trip with a guide next time, If you need some recommendations in Galveston let me know.

You need to understand offshore fishing.

The best fishing is going to be waters more than 180 feet in depth.

Now understand that the continental shelf extends far out into the Gulf. Meaning that the floor of the ocean gently slopes away from land.

The speed of one of those big tubs is generally pretty slow.

So in order to reach waters of sufficient depth to catch fish they must travel a certain distance. At 15 knots it will take approximately 2 hours to reach structure 30 nautical miles from shore. Another two hours to return. At 30 nm you'll be waters approximately 200 feet, probably less.

Now, given all of that info, don't you think you'd do better on an 8 or 12 hour trip?

snapper beds are 20 naut miles from port Isabel. when i worked the boats back in the 80's , our six hour trips usually translated into about 2 1/2 hours of running, 3 hours of fishing, and 1/2 hour of cleaning!