Puerto Rico Guide Report -- Beware

[Gtown]

Hey All:

As mom always said, if you don't have anything nice to say...

But I feel I have to post the following.

This past weekend my wife and I were down in Puerto Rico. After surfing the web and reading up on various in-shore guides, my first choice in guides was booked, so I decided to hire Till Brauer. We corresponded by phone and traded a few emails and confirmed that we were on for Saturday at 5:45 AM.

A little background is necessary. Up here north of Boston I fish when I can, but we have 3 little kids so that means I don't fish too much, but when I do my wife is very understanding. She's not an angler, so it was a bit of a coup that I was able to get her to agree to get up at the crack of arse (on her birthday no less) and on one of only 3 mornings we'd be in Puerto Rico, to go fishing of all things.

We were in good spirits and arrived at the designated hour and found Till's boat.

He was nowhere to be found. Several phone calls were placed by myself and a few other captains who were waiting on clients, but all went directly to voicemail. In the end, he was a no-show. A couple of the other captains said that this wasn't totally out of the ordinary for Till, but I can't say if they were being honest or just badmouthing the competition.

What I do know is that I was out $40 in cab fare, had an angry wife on her birthday, and didn't get to go fishing.

When I got home, I had an email from Till apologizing for not showing. He said he had food poisoning. I accepted his apology and take him at his word.

But just let this serve as a word of caution if you decide to hire him.

[bonesational]

I think it is a little shady, but what exactly are you warning people about if in fact you take him at his word as you say you do? That he is prone to food poisoning? You can't bash a guy and say you take him at his word in the same breath. Just say you were disappointed in that the skipper got sick if you really take him at his word. Ask for other experiences if you're suspicious.


I would rather have a skipper no show than be a hung over mess and take my money and ruin my whole day.

[fabrahamson]

I fished with Til a couple of years ago. Only once but we had a good morning and Til was enthusiastic and seemed like he wouldn't want to be doing anything else. I guess I'd take him at his word on the food poisoning but I would like to think he'd try to get in touch. Did he have contact info?

[Swalt]

Even if you have food poinsoning, unless you are in the hospital on an IV, you can answer your phone, even if you are sitting on the toilet. Especially if you have someone that has come from that far away to meet with you.

[Gtown]

I think it is a little shady, but what exactly are you warning people about if in fact you take him at his word as you say you do? That he is prone to food poisoning? You can't bash a guy and say you take him at his word in the same breath.

What I'm warning about is an instance of unprofessional behavior. Regardless if you consider it bashing him, I think most people would agree that it was unprofessional not to at least call. If I'm sick and have a meeting with a client, I'll call to say I can't make it or I'll never see the client again.

If someone had previously had a similar experience, I would have wanted to hear about it. That's all I'm saying.

[Capt. John]

OK guys- I have fished PR for many years now. Years back I had a brush with Till B. I was on my way to another part of the island and decided to book 2 days with him to explore the San Juan lagoon areas for tarpon. After numerous emails and conservations about my purpose (I was pretty much there exploring for my travel business fishing places), I made it very clear that I was looking to explore FLY FISHING opportunities and I would only have lighter rods with me for my bonefish destination I was headed too. I would need for him to bring fly rods for tarpon.... to make a very long story short. The weather the day of the first trip was raining CATS and DOGS but we headed to the boat anyway at the crack of dawn... guess what ? No Capt. Till...we waited around for about 45 minutes with several unsuccesful calls ? Just about to leave a native shows up and says we are fishing with him for Captain Till :confused: he has the keys to Till's boat so we hesitantly agreed. We head out over an hr late with driving rain to find out he has NO FLY RODS on board and is on his way to catch bait first. Needless to say the trip was a waste of time and I was ****ed. I once again tried to call Till later that day..no success.
I did not show up for the second days trip, wonder why :rolleyes:.
I instantly get a nasty message the next day from gues who - Capt. Till for us not showing on day 2... after several very verbal exchanges between myself and Till when i returned home to the states, Till apologized and offered me a free return trip...needless to say I never took him up on it.

I pretty much took it for what it was and never really bashed the guy over the internet or anywhere. I typically give captains the benefit of the doubt as anyone can have a "mess up" but in 12 years of guiding myself i have had ONE mess up, that I made good on immediatly. So you can draw your own conclusion of this captain in PR.....

[bonefishwhisper]

sounds like a bummer...I think what you are emailing is a necessary evil...its obvious this is a pattern of his...there really is no excuse for not showing..the food poison is a lie as we all know...you are a bigger man than me because if that had happened to me and his boat was in plain sight, well lets just leave it at that...I probably would have even showed the next day, with a baseball bat instead of rod...so the reality is you are doing HIM a FAVOR by curving blue collar revenge that will eventually catch him IMO...that has never happened to me and hopefully never will...having my room cleaned out of all valuables while out on the water with the thieves cousin has been my highlite so far.....sigh...

[Lineas Tenso]

Posible el capitan de flato?:-%

[tillbrauer]

All I want to say is that I am sorry about any inconveniece that my NOT showing up may have caused. I have offered FREE fishing and CAB FARE reimbursement, that is alla that I can say
As for the guide that said he had a brush up with me, John, If you met me, you would know what kind of a person I am, Christian and a humble man, I would never get in a brush up, as all people are prone to a mistake once in a while. Please don't talk trash about a person that you do not know, I have a family, a wonderful wife and two beautiful, smart boys.
God Bless you all, and good fishing.
Till
tillbrauer@gmail.com
787-448-6665

[Bonecrusher]

Capt Till,
I don't know you, but what you have to realize is that for some of us, we get to fish once, maybe twice a year and it's something we look forward to for a really, really long time. Whereas you may fish on a daily basis and it's just another day at the office, a day on the water might be something we've thought about for 12 months.
In any regard, making a 'mistake' is unacceptable unless it's truly an emergency. As you know, the news (especially bad news about a guide or lodge) in the saltwater fly fishing community travels fast and you can quickly develop a poor reputation that will cost you business when you don't give the client the absolute best customer service possible.
On the other hand, you can also develop clients for life when you do give great service or go above and beyond.
Just my 2 cents.

[Capt. John]

I feel I had to respond to your post Till... first off, I am a sponsor on this site and I try to post lots of information to help the anglers dedicated to this site for years now...from fishing reports, tactics, travel information and yes on occassion "bad experiences". Like I said in my first post I took the experience with a grain of salt and never trashed or even posted it anywhere on ANY reports or fishing sites at the time. But after hearing other reports of the same behavior or worse I feel obligated to the fellow anglers on this board to post my results as well.
You may be a good man with a nice family and if I had met you and fished with you I may have discovered that... but you never gave me the opportunity to do that...I had booked "you" for a FLY fishing charter and you never showed for our first charter, I did not book one of your "local younger guides" who showed up ready to throw live baits around. Needless to say we went back and forth on this issue years back when it happened I'm not about to rehash it here.
As I stated above I never attacked your "integrity" as a person, what I did was post the results of my experience with you and the way you run your charter business. Anglers from away places may only have one day to fish, they do not live down the street and can come back another day. They spend time and money to try and find a guy who will make that day enjoyable and memorable...it's up to us as captains to make THEM the number one priority and do whatever we can to accomodate them on thier day or make every possible attempt to contact them in the case of an emergency or change in plans, in my eyes there are no excuses for that.

Everyone is entitled to mistakes but how they deal with them at the time makes all the difference. I wish you the best of luck in the future.

[BobG]

I think this would be the perfect opportunity for Capt Brauer to become a regular contributor on R-T, and keep us updated on the tarpon situation in his neck of the woods.
Speaking for myself, I'd find that very interesting.

[prflures]

Thats a true shame that you guys had that bad experience with Till.
I used to fish a lot in the lagoon you guys were going to fish (Laguna San Jose).
I have a lot of good memories of some large fish. Even a 70 - 75 lbs. Tarpon on live sardine once and a another about the same size. The second was caught on a bomber long a 4 1/2" by the long bridge (Theodoro Moscoso). That was on my kayak. I got it on at around 5:30am and released it at 7:00 am.
I have also caught a lot of Snook in the lagoons many creeks and mangrove shores. Those can easily be caught on live sardine or Zoom Flukes in many colors (I'll let you figure that out yourself).
I'm sure that if you would of been able to go on that fishing trip with Till (even though I don't personally know him), you would of enjoyed it and remembered the trip for a long time.
I'll tell you what guys, next time you go out to Puerto Rico, you can email me @ puertoricofishin@gmail.com.
I'll be glad to go out with you guys and make sure you catch a few fish. But I have no boat. So if you guys are willing to go fishing from the shore and get your feet wet. I'm sure you will have a good time. I wouldn't advice anyone to get on the kayak with me. Unless your trully up for a true adrenaline rush. Of course your going to have to pay for the beer.:-%










http://i701.photobucket.com/albums/ww20/prflures/P6240352.jpg