Dolphin Dock Inc.

If you want to ride on a boat for a few hours and completely disregard the idea that you wanted to catch fish this place is for you. I went on a 4 hour trip with my dad knowing full well that this is a party boat which will have many people on it so our expectations weren’t exactly set too high. After buying tickets for a 1pm trip with a boarding time of 12:30pm we were expecting the staff to start gathering people shortly after 12:30pm. At around 12:45pm many people in the group were expecting to start boarding so they started gathering near the boat hoping to leave soon. Despite having about three people attending to the boat not one of them bothered to let anyone waiting by the boat know when the approximate boarding time will be or if we were going to be delayed. The staff went about doing some random tasks they were tending to and smoking cigarettes despite clearly seeing many people anxiously waiting right by their boat. When the captain finally greeted us shortly after 1pm his main concern seemed to be whether he will have another trip scheduled to leave at 5:30pm the same day so he said he may not have enough time to explain to us the rules of the boat and what we needed to know because we are already leaving late. At this point we started to realize how incredibly inept these people are at running this operation and that customer service is not exactly their forte.
After doing a brief overview we finally left around 1:15pm and the captain told us that we will be going to a «special» spot further away than he went out earlier, but likely had the promise of more fish when we got there. He said it would take us about 45min to get there and after an hour and half drive we finally got to the «special» spot. Keep in mind that these guys do this every day and yet they still can’t even accurately state how long a routine boat trip will take. When we finally got to fishing they gave everyone on the boat bait which was dead shrimp which by the look of it was clearly some cheap small frozen shrimp they import from nowhere near the gulf coast area. I’ve been on many fishing trips and this is by far some of the worst bait I’ve seen. I didn’t expect them to use live bait, but I at least expected them to use some better quality dead shrimp given how much money they collect from each of these trips. Given that about 40 people are fishing at the same time around you expect your lines to be tangled with those near you, but I’ve been on these types of boats before so I managed to avoid this for the most part. After catching only a couple of fish at this location the captain proceeded to move us back to another spot which was another 20 minute ride backwards at which we didn’t do much better. After a few more reminders about needing to get back for his 5:30pm trip, the captain managed to drive the boat nearly 2.5 hours out the the total 4 hours fishing time. This is definitely great if you want to sit around and look at dolphins, but really terrible if you wanted to catch some fish.
In all I’ve been on many party boats in different places and this one is by far the worst. The staff only seems to care about running the maximum people through these boats at the maximum profit for them and very little beyond that. I’m sure there are other party boats in the area so I would steer far away from this one.

Captain scot, michel and deckhand chris, Daniel. Were amazing they put us on the fish none stop. It was a blast!

We just went for a 4 hour bay fishing trip on Saturday (02÷13÷16). We had such a great time, I was worried because it was my 8 year old’s first time but the workers on deck helped him (and me) every step of the way. They came and checked on him many times, making sure he was baited up and that his line was out far enough. We caught about 10 fish, but the amount of fun my son had meant way more! Excellent customer service, we will be back!

My husband was on a 12 hour red snapper fishing trip with the Dolphin Docks yesterday 1÷30÷16. Captain Tim and the entire crew knew what they were doing and appeared to have fun doing it. Great group of men. Fantastic experience and he will highly recommend them. He has fished with Dolphin Docks in the past, but went out with another company early this year and will never do that again. It was a terrible experience. Dolphin Docks is the best in his opinion.

Great if you want a dolphin viewing trip. Unfortunately we wanted to fish. We caught plenty of 4 to 6 in catfish that we threw back. One person caught a fish worth keeping. We rode from place to place for 3.5 hours, and fished for about 20 – 30 minutes.
Again, great if you want a slow Bay tour or a dolphin tour.
Horrible if you want to fish… go back to firefighting capt.

Let me start off by saying this was not my first trip and won’t be me last. I normally go on the 12 hour and while this trip wasn’t the most productive that had nothing to do with the crew or charter. Several of us got food poisoning at a local restaurant. That said, the crew did their best for us and even with 10 foot seas they got us on fish and even helped me when I was hanging off the rail feeding the fish or ran out of strength from shouting at the water. What could have been a total disaster turned out ok. I’m writing this 3 days after and I am still sick, but I have some nice Dog Snappers, Shark, and Vermillion in the fridge.
Thanks to the crew at the Dock, see you again soon.
Gary

Don’t buy ribbon fish here! Two dozen ribbon fish $ 30 and terrible quality. Woody’s two dozen ribbon fish $ 15. Try Woody’s first!!!

Worst fishing experience I have had in 30 years. Went on half day bay trip. Not one fish caught and kept for 14 fishermen. Capt parked on sunken WWII ship for 2 hours. No fish but my guests from the UK caught the sunken ship 6 times. The Capt still did not move. Caught more fish the next day off the pier. Wasted $ 360 dollars.

DO NOT USE THIS COMPAMY. I’ve used Dolphin Dock twice. the first time the whole boat caught one fish. The second time a group of 20 – 30 people caught nothing. I know that you can’t really control the fish so after the first time I thought it was just bad luck. But seeing as other places I’ve been fishing with never came close to this, I knew after the 2^nd time that these people just plain don’t know what they are doing. And it’s not very reasonably priced, especially to come back empty handed. At the end the deck hand asked everyone for a tip when we didn’t catch anything, pretty asinine if you ask me.

Terrible business practices. Horrible customer service. My husband went for a guys night fishing trip with a friend and they drove from Austin to Port Aransas after calling in advance and booking with Dolphin Docks. After driving for hours, wasting expensive gas, and paying for a room to sleep beforehand they show up to be told they overbooked the boat and that they weren’t going to be able to take the trip. There was no apology offered, the staff was rude and there was no attempt to make it right. My advice, don’t book with Dolphin Docks and if you do choose to take the risk make sure you have a back up plan if you actually want to catch fish.

Always have a great time with the Dolphin Docks crew! Recently went on the 24 hr trip and had a great trip with a friend and my nephew! Caught lots of fish and had plenty of laughs…

I went out for the 12-​hour trip with my dad for Father’s Day weekend. Three hours out, six hours of fishing, three hours back. Everyone caught tons of fish! Red snapper is in season, and I think everyone on the boat got their limit of 2. One guy even caught a shark!
This was so much fun, and I would love to do it again!

My husband enjoyed all the times he’s gone on fishing trips with then as well as I have. the grew are nice and helpful. You do need to ask for help if needed but they try to help everyone. I do recommend everyone to take the motion sickness pill before going it will save your stomach a whole lot of pain lol they do have drinks and snacks on board if your stomach allows it mine personal doesn’t lol. My little on the other hand love to snack. Oh and little kids go for free not bad

We went today and let me start off by saying. What a nice crew! We had a group of four and there was probably 20 people total on the boat. Didn’t really get the service that I read about. just stuck some poles along the side of the boat and handed me a cup of bait, while some others were being taught and handed all kinds of cool bait. My group of four caught three and the lady who cleaned it and was very nice :)
All in all. It was a pretty good trip even though two of us got sick :/​and yes we took medicine the day before and the day of :) will def go again!
Oh n another good thing was. the gentleman at the front tried to convince us to go another day because the waves were pretty bad. Did we listen? No lol. And next time we will! Haha

Such an amazing experience! My friend and I had no real experience fishing and they taught us everything we needed to know and let us have this amazing trip. We caught about 18 pounds of catfish and they cleaned it ($.40 a pound) and we took it to a local restaurant to have it cooked up. Tim and April are so nice and they made us feel very welcomed. They are amazing people! Also, we met some great people on our boat and everyone was very friendly. Sunshine is the sweetest lady and she cleaned our fish! She had great suggestions about the area! I want to come back!

The place to go this is my guys trip, father and son or man trip to go in. I go once a year and is my first choice to go on!!!

My group of friends (6 people, some of whom had never fished before) decided on the 4 hour trip. It turned out to be a lot of fun! Weather was great and sunny, everybody caught some fish including a couple of sharks, and staff was helpful for those of us who had less experience.
The only thing I would say could be improved was general friendliness and eagerness to teach from some members of the staff, but they did their job so not much to complain about. Overall, we were very happy with the experience and the value for money ($ 55 for the trip with all equipment included). They also had services once we reached the shore to have our fish cleaned and prepared ($ 0.40/lb) which was really nice. We ended up taking our catch to a nearby restaurant to have it prepared that night and it was extra delicious having caught it ourselves!

20 or so folks went on a 5-​hour fishing trip. Two fish were caught all afternoon/​evening. The boat was a mess. I know it’s a boat, but come on folks. I’ve been on other fishing charters. The smell of bleach was so strong in the ladies room I thought I’d pass out. Hooks strewn all along the deck and railing. The deck hands, while chumming, attracted sea birds that promptly entangled themselves in my line and couldn’t get loose. Yep, I went fishing and caught a bird. Should have just fished off the pier.

So much fun. We personally didn’t catch anything we could keep (Remora) but the crew was awesome — others caught king fish. Although I took Dramamine before we left– I started feeling a little sick at the 4.5 hour mark. Once the boat was moving again, I felt fine.
We did the 5 hour trip and shared a pole for $ 75. My son did most of the fishing. I offered to help but the guys working did it all. They were awesome and worth tipping at the end of the trip. The captain was very engaged too with everyone and moved a few times to try to increase our chances.
I’d go again and travel with these guys.

Great time. Good results. I have been on a bunch of chartered fishing trips with mixed results. This was a 12 hr night trip which was really enjoyable. Long trip out (almost 4 hrs). Fished 5 hrs. Captain put us on the fish. Vermillion Snapper. They were deep but we got em. Limits were caught all around. Great deck hands. Many folks got sick but thats how it goes. Worth it!