LA Waterfront Cruises

Fishing all day on Saturday. Boat was clean, Food was okay, but person serving was nice. Captain and Crew were easy going and made us first-​timers/​beginners feel welcome and helped us with baiting, changing hooks, assist with tangled lines, removing fish from hook, and taking us to spots where fish were definitely biting. For the people in our party who actually would listen, they provided several tips that helped us catch plenty of fish. Caught 16, but had to throw back 5 and for the first time fishing in the ocean, I was definitely happy with the outcome.
Friendly service, positive attitude, and no need to prepare food because it was all taken care of made for a very good day. Also, restrooms were clean, because I know that scores high for some folks. Enjoy!

Went fishing on the sportking on thursday day. What a horrible experince first the captain is not a very nice person. He yells at the way we fish. We pay for our tickets n shoulnt be scared. Deck guys are horrible worst ive seen. I belive there brothers. The older one doesnt want to help no one. Will never i mean never will go on this boat again. Horrible place

Don’t have a website if you are not going to keep it current. EVERYWHERE it said weekday cruises leave at 10. Showed up at 9:40 to find out it already left at 9:30. Unreliable and a huge disappointment to our out of state visitor who leaves in the morning and now can’t go.

Was fishing Catalina Island Saturday Sep 12,2015 when the Triton Sportfishing boat pulls up next to us and drops anchor. Breaking all rules of sportfishing etiquette. You need to give fisherman space to fish and you do not encroach on their fishing space. Then the loudmouth Captain threatened to call the Harbor Patrol on us after they parked in our chumline… go figure

Pros: You can take your own snacks and drinks onto the boat. Boat is clean and has ample seating. All outdoor seats are great views. The staff is friendly and helpful. A staff from the Aquarium of the Pacific provides the educational portion of the tour and goes around answering questions. We saw whales, dolphins and a pretty large Mako shark.
Cons: Boat does not leave on time. No plan for when/​if people get seasick. A couple of folks threw up… one over the railing into the ocean and another into a cup #gross.
Overall our trip was enjoyable. I recommend wearing a hat and sunscreen. Bring your camera and some water.

Best part of the trip was the cook, he was great! Boat was stingy on the bait, first time where I had to wait in line for a bait! Crew needs to help a little, I mean at least help the newbs with tangles, I was doing more work, they certainly knew how to eat ice cream though! Overall, boat needs to be better managed, we didn’t even have gas in the boat!

The cook on the sport king fishing boat is arrogant, rude and does not understand customer service whatsoever. The captain likes to be little fisherman on what type of fishing poles and tackle they use and how they fish.
These people don’t get that we just paid good money to fish and just want to have good time.
We paid to use whatever tackle we want and fish how we like.
Also the the captain is cussing and yelling constantly, out of control

A buddy and I did a ¾ day deep sea fishing trip on the Sport King on Saturday ⁷⁄₂₅. We left at 6 AM and returned at 6:45 PM. After we paid the $ 65 fee, we enter the boat and are charged $ 2 for a bean sack bag to place your caught fish. Didn’t think much of it at the time, but I would never have guessed this was a sign of more negative things to come about. As we depart, I can’t help but notice we have 3 deckhands for the trip, I say the 1^st guy was about 30 – 35 years old, the 2^nd deckhand is about 16 years young, and the 3^rd deckhand is literally about 12 years young. It was nice as the boat already had live bait ready to go so we would not have to stock up in harbor. As we’re heading out, the youngest deckhand goes upstairs and knocks out on the upper deck staff only area. He sleeps until about 9:30 AM. They barely offer any help to passengers who need to prepare their fishing lines.
As we riding on the rear of the boat to Catalina, we are told by regular fishermen that you have to fish out of your assigned # (which was on the side of the boat). Of the many fishing trips i’ve taken, never has it been assigned spot fishing… the spot you chose when you get on is the spot you fish out of for the rest of the day. Now my buddy and I are a little flustered about this but agree to go to our spot on the port side of the boat. I decide to grab a bite to eat because i’m feeling a little cranky. The cook tells me to come back in 20 minutes. I do this a total of 3 times before the cook tells me she’ll call me when my food is ready. I give her no attitude because I know she’s got a boat full of people to feed, so I respectfully give her her space. She does have a little attitude but to me it’s not that big of a deal.
As we cruise around Catalina, its now 10 AM and the Captain «Micromanager» finally finds a spot with yellowtail. After being on the boat for 4 hours with zero fishing, everyone claps and is ecstatic. Before we can drop our lines into the water, Captain Micromanager will not let the 16 year old deckhand drop bait into the bait side tanks until he give the approval. Everyone is waiting around and many were impatient because we should be able to bait our lines since we’re stopped. I kind of give the deckhand a little attitude to drop bait, but he tells us its Captains order for him not to drop bait. It isn’t until 20 minutes later I understand why he refused to drop bait, because Captain Micromanager is a freaking jerk with a loud mouth and temper!!!
After cruising Catalina for 4 hours, Captain finally allows the deckhand to drop bait and off to the races we go. There are yellowtail everywhere and adrenaline is pumping throughout the boat. Captain Loudmouth (his 2^nd nickname) is on the speaker yelling at the top of his lungs at everyone to drop their lines, where to cast, and how to fish to many of the non seasoned fishers. The whole time, he literally is on the speaker madly screaming at everyone, complimenting his return fishermen, and to a few extents, talking negatively to rookies. This is stuff you do not do to paying guests, degrade them!!!
After fishing at the spot for about 25 minutes, Captain Micromanager tells us to pull in our lines, and heads to another spot. Only a few people caught yellowtail at this spot. We cruise for another 30 minutes again until we find our next spot. We drop anchor at our new spot, and the deckhand again is not allowed to fill the bait side tanks. Captain finally gives the orders and off to the races we go again. People start catching a few fish, and the deckhands gaffes to pull out the bigger fish. I am lucky to catch my 1^st yellowtail at about 18″. The deckhand gaffes my fish into the boat, and unlike every trip i’ve been on, the deckhand carries the fish to your bag. Throughout the whole trip, the deckhands off minimal help to rookie fishers.
This goes on for the rest of the trip. I say out of the almost 13 hours we were on the boat, we only fished for about 3 hours maximum, the rest was cruising around for new spots.
I know the majority of this post is negative, but it was my honest-​to-​God experience I had on the trip, as well as my buddies experience. I do have to give a few positive comments, I finally caught my first yellowtail as Captain strictly went strictly after the big catch areas, The oldest deckhand was extremely helpful educating beginners how to set up their lines, bait, and cast their lines. He taught me a few tricks and I was finally happy to see some kind of good customer service come about from this trip.
Never will I put step foot onto this boat again! It’s sad how I finally get to read all the reviews about this boat after my trip. Had my brain been smart enough to do this before the trip, I would have chose to been on another boat with friendly and professional staff, and a true Captain who wasn’t a douche!

Decided to try something new with the family and came across this place on GROUPON. I heard mixed feelings about whale watching in general and I was a bit afraid that we wouldn’t get to see a whale but hey who can control nature. We got to the place and the service was average, we waited in line for a half hour in the sun so that wasn’t so fun, once we went aboard the ship it was relieving. We found great seats right in front of the ship and began our adventure. We got to see tons of people enjoying the water life, we also got to see some seal lions, dolphins and believe it or not WE SPOTTED A WHALE! I would recommend bringing children since it’s more enjoyable to see them have fun. Beers, drinks and snacks are available on board.

Bought whale watching tickets from Groupon but the company gave me difficulty when I tried to redeem them. If I could give this company negative stars I would.

We took the Saturday 12:30 whale watching cruise and it was AMAZING! Got to see a humpback whale breach a ton of times. The staff was very friendly and informative. Our kids had a blast and would recommended this for a fun day out. You can enjoy the delicious seafood right on the dock before or after your cruise. Note– Docks are less crowded in the morning. Would recommend this to everyone!

The employee’s are really cool and are really helpful. I really recommend anyone to come out and fish with this company

This review is for the Triton boat and staff 7÷24÷15
1. All the staff (Brian was the captain) were friendly and helpful! They set up a team environment on the boat so people wouldn’t hog any one particular part of the boat. They are also friendly to women and willing to answer questions.
2. The boat was clean, a little small but worked well because their was a limit of 25 people
3. We had good size sardine bait and never ran out
4. We caught great fish. I know this is going to sound crazy… their were 2 yellowtails, 2 yellowfin tunas, 5 bluefin tuna, 6 durado.
5. I will go on this boat again and recommend it to others

6 of us went out on the Sport King ¾ day boat 7÷14÷15. I had been tracking that boat’s results for the past couple of weeks and was impressed with the fish count and the low number of anglers reported on Mondays through Thursdays. Apparently, that data is completely and purposely erroneous. On our boat there were 64 anglers (heard the mate tell the captain while handing him the daily boarding tickets). There were 27 yellowtail caught. That info came from a Saltwater Game Official who was on the boat collecting data. So, this morning I check the fish and angler count reported. Anglers ACTUAL: 64 REPORTED: 41.
Yellowtail ACTUAL: 27 REPORTED: 108. UNBELIEVABLE!!!
I called the day before leaving and was told, at that time, there were 15 anglers reported going out, so I figured that may get up to 30 or so by the next morning. I was told to be there between 5 and 5:15 a.m. We got there at 5:05 and discovered that they issued slots on a first come first serve basis, something I haven’t seen at other marinas since the 80’s. Needless to say there was nothing near the stern. Obviously, the regulars knew about this. Had we known we would have been there at 4:30 am.
We left ten minutes late while waiting for last minute walk-​ons to register and get tickets. As we were pulling out, and NOT before, the captain announced that bait may be a problem and there would be rain checks if we wanted upon returning to the dock (not true). At the bait dock we loaded about 5 scoops of some nice size sardines. Five scoops for 64 rods. Needless to say, we ran out of bait 1 hour after we began fishing, almost to the minute. Most of those baits were victims of cut and tangled lines. With the current as it was the only people with even a shot at hooking up were the 8 or so anglers at the stern and stern corners (the boat is 65’X20’).
After the first hour the rest of the day consisted of frozen squid strips. I threw some iron and lead heads but it was too packed to retrieve without tangling the few (40 or so) people left fishing.
The Captain? Unprofessional and obnoxious. As we were heading out we saw one of the mates take a bottle of vodka up to the bridge. That explained the captain’s demeanor. The crew? Worthless. Sorry leadership leads to a sorry crew.
Don’t be fooled by the fish reports on this boat, obviously somebody was seeing WAY more than double when it came to the fish and «imagined» a little LESS than half of the anglers.
0 stars if possible.

On Monday, 07÷13÷15, our fishing trip on the Sport King started out fine, as we headed out to Catalina. The Captain put us on yellowtail, at one point he became a madman, yelling at everybody to catch fish.
99.9% of the fish were too small to keep, he insisted he wanted a count of over 100 fish for the day, regardless of the cost. A lot of tempers flared up, due to tangled lines, and fighting, with the fishermen on the boat. The Captain needs to be in control of his emotions.

Can’t believe it. Get there super early. Obviously there are certain spots people like to fish from and the regulars know that. The boat had too many people on it by about 20 people. 45 would have been fine. The thing that was the worst was watching the crew throw the trash, cans, bags, etc… into the ocean! Really! Our ocean is not your dumping ground for trash, its your job to help keep our ocean clean. Would have been nice if the crew would have had gas already in the boat. I had the be there at 545 and took 2 hours for the crew to get gas, bait and then get going. Crew was nice though.

We chose whale watching at the Long Beach location on 4÷6÷15. Sad, sad, sad! The sea was EXTREMELY turbulent! It was like being on a vicious 2 hour roller coaster ride. We were tossed around. There were so many people throwing up. Children were screaming and crying. Women and children were huddled on the lower deck up-​chucking. Some men were hurling over the sides of the boat. The crew was walking around passing out plastic bags. Surely they should have informed us about the choppy water before we boarded. NEVER AGAIN! What a rip-​off!

We went out on 2÷15÷2015 on the 12 PM departure from the pier right next to Long Beach Aquarium. We saw at least a dozen of whales In four pods, several dolphins and seals. Great crew, great boat, amazing experience.

Color me anything but impressed. I had an average experience with this company. Not bad but not great.
The parking was herendous. We went for the 330pm tour on Sunday and it was mayhem. The line to enter the parking lot was the length of four or five signal lights. We ended up driving up a street and parking so we could just walk there. But the car we were driving with waited in the line and they got there quite a bit after us (it was a ten minute walk). Although, this company doesn’t have anything to do with the parking… my stars will not incorporate awful parking.
We entered their shop and it was boiling. It was so hot that I wanted to tear off my clothes. Another thing that was bothersome was the amount of flies that kept buzzing around. GROSS! We had a 10+ party and we all got on just in time which is great.
We board the boat and find a spot for all of us to be together. So there’s ample room on the boat, maybe not during the rush hours though. the indoor spot on this boat is also verrrry hot. Its better to just freeze outside then die of heat on the inside.
The ride was ROUGH. Water splashing everywhere and half the boat was soaked with water. So if you don’t want to be wet then stay inside or closer to the middle of the boat during the rough parts of the ride. It was a lot of rocking. I was fine but there was a person in our group that started feeling sick.
We went whale watching so that we could see… WHALES! I mean thats the title of the tour! But womp womp womp… no whales, just ten minutes of dolphin watching and 2 hours of driving around aimlessly with nothing to see. Meh, this could have been better but it wasn’t.
So it was half and half. 3 stars for seeing dolphins but I really feel like it should be 2 stars (i might change the rating to two stars if I ponder it some more) I personally wouldn’t book with them again.

My first whale watching experience. Weather wasn’t great and it was choppy. My wife gave me hard time about me taking motion sickness pill before the boat ride. But eating hot dog and doritos while boat was rocking back and forth and as my wife looked on in digust was priceless. Joking aside, if it’s windy consider taking the motion sickness pill, vast majority of the people on the boat looked ill by the time we got back. In fact, I saw quite few puking at the back of the boat. There are bathrooms on the boat and snack and drinks (including beer!) are available for reasonable price. Snack bar guy was extremely friendly, he even looked after my almost 3 year old son while my wife ran to the window to see the dolphins.
He even offered to take group photo for us. Great Service!
My only complaint was not being able to hear the annoucement outside of the boat.
Captain would announce «whale at 12 o’ clock» but people on the deck can’t hear this
so it’s possible many missed out on the sighting.
My recommendation is, don’t bother bringing binoculars or camera. You’ll be too busy adjusting the binocular or pressing the shutter on the camera and will most likely miss the whole experience. Besides, it would be close to impossible to capture good dolphin and whale photos considering the boat is rocking and dolphin and whale would constantly dive deep and pop up whenever they want to. Only good photo I captured during the trip was sea gull following our boat.