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I keep hearing from anglers around me how tough it is to find the perfect fishing guide/trip online. For so many anglers, especially those without much experience, the process often starts on google or fishing booker, involves looking through multiple guides, talking to mutual friends, referencing different websites, calling a local bait shop, calling multiple guides, etc.
My name is George, I am a college student at Indiana University. I am working with a good friend at Purdue University to build a website for finding great fishing captains/trips. We have entered a business plan competition at Purdue.
Our overall goal, is to arm anglers with information and consolidate contact information for guides so they can find the exact trip they are looking for and not feel like they are gambling with their money. Right now, it seems like too many websites focus on helping anglers find a trip and a guide instead of the trip and the guide.
One day, if this tool is useful to anglers, I would love for it to become a business that helps both anglers and captains, but we have a long way to go until we get there. Lots of research needs to be done first so we can make sure we are taking the right steps towards solving a problem. We've been working in person with anglers in our local area and in Florida to try and understand why they don't book trips online very often, and also with captains in Florida to understand why they have a difficult time filling up their trips. However, we know its super important to hear from more anglers throughout the country, including the Texas community to learn about why many of them don't book trips online.
Here's a couple pain points we see for anglers booking/searching for trips online.
1. For experienced anglers it's tough for them to find a captain who has the boat and knowledge of local conditions they need to pursue a specific fish in a specific area (ex. swordfish in the keys) without relying on a network of referrals from mutual friends and experts such as yourself.
2. It's also difficult for experienced anglers to know about the performance of captains, ex. if a captain has a reputation for being able to catch Tarpon like nothing else, without talking to their friends who have fished there or calling local bait shops. (on a side note we think it would be really cool to link this to fishing reports where people can know who's catching the most of x fish in x area.)
3. On the other side its near impossible for new anglers to know what their options are online without having to search first for a location which in may situations eliminates their options and exposure to different types of fishing they can do. (ex. If everyone searching for "charter fishing in Texas" also knew how cool kayak fishing for x fish in x stream closer to their home, and then could actually do it, instead of just seeing a few promoted charters, there would be more people out there stoked on different types of fishing and fishing overall.)
4. It can be tough to communicate what your expectations are for a trip with a guide before booking a trip. Although this can be done on the phone, it can be forgotten, especially by people new to fishing, and creates a situation where the both the guide and angler don't have the best experience.
5. It's tough to link conditions to guides, so when anglers make a booking, they may find out when they arrive that the condition's aren't great and the fish they are looking for aren't biting, and then they are out enough money, in some cases, to buy a Winston boron rod.
I by no means think this is a complete list of reasons why its hard to find a great trip online, but I'd like to learn about more and chat with anyone interested in helping make it possible for more anglers and guides to share their passion for fishing.
I hope this starts some discussion about problems anglers have experienced when searching for trips & captains online. Please reach out to me via a direct message if you're interested and would like to share any information about experiences of yours. I'll bite (pun)
Also, my friend and I have assembled a quick 6 question poll on google forms (the link is below) which takes ~2 minutes to complete.
Thanks so much for your time.
Happy catches,
-G Armstrong
My name is George, I am a college student at Indiana University. I am working with a good friend at Purdue University to build a website for finding great fishing captains/trips. We have entered a business plan competition at Purdue.
Our overall goal, is to arm anglers with information and consolidate contact information for guides so they can find the exact trip they are looking for and not feel like they are gambling with their money. Right now, it seems like too many websites focus on helping anglers find a trip and a guide instead of the trip and the guide.
One day, if this tool is useful to anglers, I would love for it to become a business that helps both anglers and captains, but we have a long way to go until we get there. Lots of research needs to be done first so we can make sure we are taking the right steps towards solving a problem. We've been working in person with anglers in our local area and in Florida to try and understand why they don't book trips online very often, and also with captains in Florida to understand why they have a difficult time filling up their trips. However, we know its super important to hear from more anglers throughout the country, including the Texas community to learn about why many of them don't book trips online.
Here's a couple pain points we see for anglers booking/searching for trips online.
1. For experienced anglers it's tough for them to find a captain who has the boat and knowledge of local conditions they need to pursue a specific fish in a specific area (ex. swordfish in the keys) without relying on a network of referrals from mutual friends and experts such as yourself.
2. It's also difficult for experienced anglers to know about the performance of captains, ex. if a captain has a reputation for being able to catch Tarpon like nothing else, without talking to their friends who have fished there or calling local bait shops. (on a side note we think it would be really cool to link this to fishing reports where people can know who's catching the most of x fish in x area.)
3. On the other side its near impossible for new anglers to know what their options are online without having to search first for a location which in may situations eliminates their options and exposure to different types of fishing they can do. (ex. If everyone searching for "charter fishing in Texas" also knew how cool kayak fishing for x fish in x stream closer to their home, and then could actually do it, instead of just seeing a few promoted charters, there would be more people out there stoked on different types of fishing and fishing overall.)
4. It can be tough to communicate what your expectations are for a trip with a guide before booking a trip. Although this can be done on the phone, it can be forgotten, especially by people new to fishing, and creates a situation where the both the guide and angler don't have the best experience.
5. It's tough to link conditions to guides, so when anglers make a booking, they may find out when they arrive that the condition's aren't great and the fish they are looking for aren't biting, and then they are out enough money, in some cases, to buy a Winston boron rod.
I by no means think this is a complete list of reasons why its hard to find a great trip online, but I'd like to learn about more and chat with anyone interested in helping make it possible for more anglers and guides to share their passion for fishing.
I hope this starts some discussion about problems anglers have experienced when searching for trips & captains online. Please reach out to me via a direct message if you're interested and would like to share any information about experiences of yours. I'll bite (pun)
Also, my friend and I have assembled a quick 6 question poll on google forms (the link is below) which takes ~2 minutes to complete.
Thanks so much for your time.
Happy catches,
-G Armstrong
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