Full transcript of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Episode 642 with Capts. Wes, Weston, and Perry Bedell.

Three Generations, One Boat

Wes Bedell: My name is Wes Bedell, and this is the Tom Rowland Podcast.

Tom Rowland: Guys, good to see you, man. Wes, Perry, Weston — good to have you guys here at ICAST.

Wes Bedell: Absolutely. Thanks for having us.

Tom Rowland: For sure. We got hooked up through my friend Clay Guida, who's also your friend — you guys have fished with him. He's a maniac and an awesome all-around great guy. But I love the story, man, because I've got two boys of my own, and neither one wanted to be a fishing guide. Both of your boys are fishing guides. I saw a post — the one that got me, I was like, I've got to get these guys on the podcast. You were going out, Wes, with your clients in the boat, and you look over here and there's one of your boys, and you look over there and there's another one. You had this post, and you were just really proud of your boys, following in your footsteps. It's really cool, because we have some families in the Florida Keys that are second- and third-generation guides, but usually it's two boys and only one becomes a guide. You guys are one of the few families I know where all of you went into the guiding world. So what's that been like?

Wes Bedell: Well, the way it kind of started was — I knew we had something special. We entered a local family tournament in Naples and fished it for a long duration. We kept winning it every single year, and it got to 10 in a row. We were walking up to the podium for the largest snook and largest redfish trophies again, and I saw the faces of everyone at the tables in the banquet hall just shaking their heads like, “Oh my God, another one.” I knew right then that we had something special, and I also knew we had to step back a little and let the other families have a go at it.

Tom Rowland: To win anything 10 times in a row is pretty exceptional.

Wes Bedell: We even had two slams in there too — largest trout, redfish, and snook.

Tom Rowland: That's awesome. I mean, even winning it four, five, six, seven times, you start to wonder when you should stop. Ten is a nice, even number to walk away on.

Wes Bedell: Yes. And, you know, they weren't even in middle school — I think in the first one they were six and ten. That first tournament: largest snook, largest redfish. Next year: largest snook, largest redfish. It just kept happening and falling in our lap, and at that moment I knew something was going to keep happening here.

Tom Rowland: It's not always roses when that happens, right? You win the first time and everybody says, “Oh, that's cool, you won with your two little kids.” The second time it's still nice. By the third time, people start saying, “I think those guys are cheating.” The fourth time, “They're definitely cheating.” Did you experience that? Because I certainly have.

Wes Bedell: We did. We experienced the “cheater” talk, and they'd always check our ruler at the end. It was always, “Let's see your pictures — where are you guys fishing?” We had a target on our back even back then.

Tom Rowland: So how do you deal with that as a dad, with your young boys?

Wes Bedell: It's a tough one. I have to bite my tongue a lot. They've had to tell me to step back a little, because I'm still kind of papa bear sometimes, protecting them. And obviously, they're equipped, well-versed, and have even picked up tricks I never showed them — they're taking what I've shown them and taking it to the next level, and I can only be so proud.

Tom Rowland: Of course — that's what fishing is. Each of you has a little bit different interests, different mentors, different people you've fished with, and you take a piece here and a piece there until somebody's got something nobody else has.

Different Paths to the Same Boat

Tom Rowland: So, Weston, you're the older one, right?

Perry Bedell: You're the oldest, okay.

Tom Rowland: So you're 22?

Weston Bedell: I'm 22. He's 25.

Tom Rowland: Twenty-five, okay. So, Perry, when did you think about starting to guide?

Perry Bedell: Honestly, Weston and I were both different on that. He always thought he wanted to be a guide his whole life growing up. I honestly never thought about it one bit as a kid. I liked fishing, enjoyed it, but never really looked at it that way. I went to school for a couple of years after high school — community college, no real path set, just kind of messing around, being a kid, having fun. I moved back after two years, and, ironically, my dad took a bad spill off the dock.

Tom Rowland: Your dad?

Perry Bedell: Yeah. He said, “You're gonna come be my mate, I need a hand.” After the first or second charter I thought, what was I even thinking this whole time? It was awesome — I fell in love with it all over again.

Tom Rowland: So you can probably throw a cast net pretty good — you're a big, strong guy.

Perry Bedell: I can. I haven't thrown one in a long time, though.

Tom Rowland: Well, neither has Robert Trussett — his son's very good at throwing the cast net, so once he graduated to that, he figured it was time for a mate. So how did your journey start, Weston — back to that tournament?

Weston Bedell: That tournament we won a lot built my love for fishing. I knew I wanted to do what he did. Even in middle school, on weekends off, spring break, or Christmas break, my dad would ask if I wanted to work for him — rig baits, hook lines, whatever — and I'd do it, and he'd throw me half the tip, and I thought it was awesome. But the money really wasn't what it was about — it was the expression on people's faces after the charter, how good a time they had. Seeing that growing up made me love the game even more.

Instant Gratification and the Memories That Last

Tom Rowland: That's the thing about guiding. People ask me what I miss about it since I don't guide anymore, and I always say guiding is instant gratification. You do all this homework for years to prepare, then you go out, you have good communication with someone — “what would be a fantastic trip for you today?” “I've never caught a permit, I'd love to do that.” You put a plan together, you go out, you catch a permit, and you see this person just so happy. You've made their day, in a lot of ways their life, and it's this instant gratification I don't really get anywhere else. Not everybody's like that — for some clients it means a tremendous amount, and for others they could catch a jack crevalle and be just as happy that it fought. But you get that special client where it really means something, and it's hard to put that experience into any other context.

Wes Bedell: Giving those people a memory they're never going to forget. I've had clients come back year after year saying, “Remember that tarpon I caught with you?” I don't really remember it, but they remember it. “We caught 19 permit that day” — I'm sorry, I don't remember which one was a little bigger, but I do remember the time and the day.

Tom Rowland: It's funny — if you saw a picture of that fish you'd probably remember instantly. I had a client send me a picture recently, and you could tell these young guys won't understand this, but there used to be photo albums, and cameras that only held 24 or 36 pictures. You'd start the day thinking, “I've only got eight pictures — better be careful.” This guy sent me a picture of his old scrapbook-style photo album where he'd written the time of day, the location — the Marquesas, Captain Tom Rowland, the date — for every permit he'd caught. He said, “Remember that day we caught three permit?” It was one of my favorite days ever, and I do kind of remember it once I saw the picture. It was so cool to see the detail he'd kept all this time.

Wes Bedell: Those are memories that people outside the guiding world can't really experience or appreciate — memories we give people that I don't think anybody else can.

Tom Rowland: It's a special thing with clients — you become real friends, they become like family. I'm sure you've seen that with people who've fished with your dad over the years, sending Christmas cards and presents.

Perry Bedell: Oh, yeah.

Tom Rowland: With their kids now, fishing the next generation. That's so cool.

Wes Bedell: It's amazing to see that go down.

From Bartending to Full-Time Guiding

Tom Rowland: So how did you get started guiding?

Wes Bedell: I always fished growing up — born and raised in Naples. My dad had a timeshare in the Keys, and we spent every lobster season there, always loved the sport and being on the water. It's kind of a crazy story — I'd just gotten married, Perry was just born, and I kept asking my wife's permission to go fishing on my day off. “Do you need anything around the house? Can I go fishing with my friends today?” It got to the point where she was getting so mad — a beautiful day, I'm off, and I'm asking, “Honey, can I go fishing?” Finally she said, “Why don't you just go get your captain's license already?” Light bulb went off, and the next week I was in captain's school. It just fell into place over the years, and now I'm almost twenty-five years in.

Tom Rowland: What were you doing before — what was your source of income?

Wes Bedell: Bartending. I still did that a little on the side and moonlighted for a while. It was actually a great way to build clientele — I'd hand my business card over the bar, and some of those people are still with us twenty-plus years later. Some have even moved from up north down to Naples so they can fish with us year-round.

Tom Rowland: You're probably close to my age — how old are you?

Wes Bedell: Fifty-one.

Tom Rowland: I'm fifty-three. So tell me what Naples was like when you grew up there as a kid.

Wes Bedell: Everyone asks if the fishing was better back then. I'd say the fishing was probably the same — there just wasn't as much pressure. People weren't fighting over spots like now, running out of the dock hammered down to certain wrecks because they know the fish are holding there on certain tides. It's more of a shotgun race now than just planning your day out. And then everybody watches what we do and tries to follow us. We caught a rental boat throwing crabs near us the other day, and I said, “Hey, how's it going? Captain Wes Bedell, On a Mission Charters.” He said, “Oh, I know who you are — wait a minute, you're fifty yards off my bow and you're throwing crabs!” In a rental boat. Stuff like that is stuff we deal with on the daily, unfortunately.

Managing Social Media as a Charter Business

Tom Rowland: That's an interesting rabbit hole — especially from a younger perspective — how do you manage social media? It's very important to the guide world; it's how we get a lot of business. You put out what you catch, people say, “I'd like to catch that,” you get a call, you take a charter. But it's not that simple, because you're going to have a different perspective from your dad. I'm curious from you boys — how do you manage it? Do you wait a couple of days to post, or post right away?

Perry Bedell: It depends — timing is everything. Say it's Friday, we go out and crush it, and the weekend's coming — we're not going to put up twenty pictures of every giant permit we just caught. But if it's a gorgeous day with inclement weather coming, we'll put it up right when we get in. We try to find that happy medium of not sending people out to follow us.

Tom Rowland: What if you're booked for the next three weeks — how does that affect your posting?

Perry Bedell: We still like to get stuff up there, but we're mindful of the pictures — we won't post the dock where we're fishing holding a giant snook the day before we're headed back there. Little things like that.

Tom Rowland: It's such a fine line. A guy just getting into the business wants to show everything because he doesn't have the business yet. A guy who has the business doesn't want to show anything, and then all of a sudden he doesn't have any trips. You've got to be active without being too active — blur the background too much and people don't like that either. It's a real question: what's the future of fishing and social media?

Wes Bedell: It's a double-edged sword for sure. And with that, I think Instagram has made so many captains and guides just pop up out of nowhere overnight. One day you're at the dock and it's, “Who's that guy?” Growing up, we knew everybody — it was a small town, or at least it used to be, and you couldn't go anywhere without seeing somebody you know. Now someone pops up on the scene and starts following you around, and it's a target we wish we could get off our back sometimes.

Tom Rowland: Well, it's a compliment in one way.

Perry Bedell: That's a good way to look at it. It actually is.

Tom Rowland: It's a compliment that anyone cares enough to follow you and say, “Those are the guys, follow them, figure out what's going on.” But then you have to figure out — okay, this person is obviously following me, so now where am I going to go? I'm changing plans.

Wes Bedell: The big girls are going to be right there in an hour, so we need to just post up and wait. It's so hard.

The Boats: Bay Boats, a Retired Skiff, and What's Next

Tom Rowland: Tell me about the boats you guys run — what style?

Perry Bedell: Kind of a bay-boat hybrid with a tower. We've got a 21-foot Privateer, an open center console with a half tower, and a 23-foot Caballo with a full tower.

Tom Rowland: And just two boats?

Perry Bedell: We've got a third one on the way.

Tom Rowland: Is there room in your operation for a skiff, or where does that fit in?

Wes Bedell: We had a skiff — I had a skiff, and we just got rid of it last year. I did love it, but it was more of a toy than a client boat. We got some fly-fishing clients, some regulars and referrals from the fly shop, but it wasn't bringing in the revenue that a bigger passenger boat could. I needed to get something for Perry — he was next in line and we needed a boat that could carry at least three people.

Tom Rowland: That's a big deal with a bay boat.

Wes Bedell: It's a really big deal. The price jump from a two-passenger skiff to a three-passenger boat is sometimes $3,400. And even getting bait, sometimes you couldn't get out to the wrecks in the skiff — it's two miles out and not always nice out there. The little 17-foot skiff — we put it through the wringer, and it's always in the back of my mind that I want another one. I miss going out and throwing topwater plugs after the rain this time of year. I do love it.

Tom Rowland: It's interesting that all of you gravitated to the same style of fishing. A lot of families have one kid who wants to be the fly fisherman, another who wants to be the offshore guy, maybe someone who wants to do it all. It's interesting you guys all lean toward the same style. Let's break down the year for me in Naples — I fish the Keys, but there's a different fishery up there. Naples has some of the most beautiful beaches — that sand is the finest, smoothest, like marshmallows.

Wes Bedell: It's crazy sand. And we still have Keewaydin Island — nine miles long and uninhabited. A few straggler homes, but you could put the boat right in the trough and run the whole beach without seeing a footprint. That's where we get our tarpon migration, right along that beach, and we see permit there too, and snook laying around with nobody around — no houses, no condos. We get that whole nine-mile stretch to spread our wings and let everything come to us.

Breaking Down the Naples Fishing Calendar

Tom Rowland: Let's start in January — what's the fishing like?

Wes Bedell: January we're in shrimp mode — the water's dirty, northwest winds, chocolate milk.

Tom Rowland: How many days are you getting in January?

Perry Bedell: We're busy — we're fishing, but it's difficult. Wintertime fishing is tricky. We can't get offshore as much, we're not going as far. We're catching lots of sheepshead, some redfish here and there, trout, black drum — that sort of thing. But that whole time we're patiently waiting for spring.

Tom Rowland: When does the transition from winter into spring happen?

Perry Bedell: February starts a turnaround, but it's always a bit of a false alarm — we'll get a week where it warms up, bait shows up, fish are chewing, and then boom, another cold front. It'll trail into March and even into April some years — this year we had a few cold fronts trail into April. But usually toward the end of March or April, that's when we're pretty much full-go springtime fishing.

Tom Rowland: And the permit you're catching — you're seeing some on the beaches and inshore, but is your permit fishery mostly offshore?

Wes Bedell: Mostly offshore permit fishery — anywhere from the wrecks, five to thirty miles out depending on the day. A lot of it is tide-based; the fish are floating away from the structure, waiting for that trigger to come up, and then they float in. We've adapted to knowing when that light switch comes on and the floodgates open, and we just sit there ready for them.

Tom Rowland: I fish permit on the wrecks in the Keys, both on the ocean side and around the Marquesas in the quicksands — shallow wrecks where you can see the wreck and the fish. We also fish coral heads and flats, and channels. It seems like there's a lot of what a permit wants in the Florida Keys — I don't know many situations elsewhere that we don't have here — flats, mangroves, situations where they're right up in the mangrove shoots, all the way out to the reef and the wrecks. Your permit fishery — you're getting some really big ones, they look huge on your Instagram.

Wes Bedell: They're really big. Weston and I actually got one — the first one we caught at a spot we found, and I sent some of the specs to Ross at BTT (Bonefish & Tarpon Trust). He said that's a monster — no way to weigh it, but he figured it was anywhere between forty-five and fifty-five pounds. He said we could call it fifty all day, and coming from BTT and Ross, I'll take that stat.

Tom Rowland: Do you have any way of measuring them — do you weigh them?

Wes Bedell: We try not to, because I don't want to hang them on the Boga.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, you can weigh them in the net — that's what I used to do.

Wes Bedell: I've seen that too — net them and weigh the whole net.

Tom Rowland: With a 60-pound Boga?

Wes Bedell: Yeah.

Tom Rowland: You can do it with a 60-pound Boga or whatever digital scale you have, and get a pretty good idea. I was surprised at how few were actually 40 pounds. And on the flats, how few were even 30 — there's a lot that are 28, 27, 26, 25. The lower you go, the more plentiful they are, but to get one over 30 on the flats is a really good thing. I found that if I could fit my fist inside the fish's mouth, that was a good sign it would go over 30.

Wes Bedell: That's the tell that it would go over 30. We knew that if a fish was between thirty-five and forty inches, you could do that hand trick and guesstimate it — you'd hate to ballpark those things because they look so big. Then it's, “That's only 25 pounds.” “My arm doesn't feel like that fish was 25 pounds!”

Tom Rowland: They really do seem bigger. When I started actually weighing them, I'd think, “That was thirty-four, thirty-five pounds,” and it's 28 — because some of them have such a heavy head but aren't as heavy in the body, maybe depending on the time of year. Once I figured out that trick, I'd tell a customer, “There's no reason to even weigh this one, it's not going over 30,” and they'd say, “What? It looks like it's over 30.” I'd weigh it to prove it — twenty-seven pounds. And when you catch the small ones, their mouths aren't much bigger than a bonefish's. It's a funny fish, the permit. Why do you guys like them so much?

Perry Bedell: Many reasons — they're such an intricate fish, obviously super fun to catch, and just the challenge. A lot of people have this misconception that catching them on the wreck is far easier than catching them on the flat. In some ways, yes — but in some ways, no. Everyone's a challenge in its own way.

Tom Rowland: Do you think they're challenging on the wrecks because they run for the structure?

Weston Bedell: Yeah, as soon as they feel that tension and that hook in the corner of their mouth, their first instinct — I've seen this game play out — is to shoot right for the wreck and try to break off. Those first few seconds of the fight are so crucial, it's hand-to-hand combat. You're using all your strength, that fish is using all of its strength, and I don't see how you couldn't love a fish like that.

Tom Rowland: What do you tell clients when that's happening — what's the coaching?

Weston Bedell: Before we even send out a crab, we give them the rundown: “I'm going to be yelling in your ear while this is going down, but here's what you have to do.” No rod in the rod holder — you're going to hold it. Permit have such a subtle eat — you can put your finger on the line, feel a little bounce, a little flick. Sometimes the client won't feel it, but I'll keep my eye on the line, and when I see the bounce I'll say, “Go — start reeling, quick, fast as you can, stay up high,” and we drive away and drag them off the wreck.

Wes Bedell: There's no ifs, ands, or buts — it's straight-up trial by fire. You have ten seconds to get that fish away from the wreck, especially the big ones.

Tom Rowland: What's the rig you guys have come up with — the rod, the reel, the line, the hook?

Weston Bedell: We use tarpon tackle.

Perry Bedell: Seven-eleven or an eight-foot rod.

Wes Bedell: Like St. Croix Mojos.

Tom Rowland: That's a nice rod — the seven-foot-eleven. I started using that for tarpon, a much heavier setup than what you'd use for permit, I'm sure, but I used it around the bridges. You can throw a mullet so far with it.

Wes Bedell: A crab too — you can really send it, like a hundred miles. It also helps to get around the engines and stuff.

Tom Rowland: That longer rod really casts well. So you guys are using trolling motors out there and spot-locking?

Wes Bedell: Yeah, that's a lot nicer. Back in the day, when I had to learn on this, I was anchoring up on these wrecks and could see them mooning half a mile away, bobbing, thinking, “There's permit over there.” Now it's just beep-beep — these guys have it so lucky. We literally had to go through the trenches and had some frustrating charters. Back then, I'd drift into them — go way up ahead of a wreck and drift, load everybody up, and when I could see them, put them in. Now that trolling-motor game is ridiculous.

Tom Rowland: So do you use braid?

Wes Bedell: Yeah, oh, yes.

Tom Rowland: And what leader?

Wes Bedell: Twenty-five, most of the time.

Tom Rowland: Is that about as much as you can get away with, given the water clarity?

Perry Bedell: We get far more eats on it. On some spots the wreck is just so big you can only put so much force with 25-pound leader, so we'll send out one rig with 25 and another with 40 or 50, just in case — sometimes they'll eat it, and those fish, nine times out of ten, we're going to catch because we can put so much drag on them.

Tom Rowland: And the hook?

Weston Bedell: We use anywhere from a 3 to a 5/0 circle hook.

Perry Bedell: Circle, always.

Tom Rowland: I'm a huge believer in the circle hook. When I first got to the Keys fishing for permit, I'd get a J-hook with just a little piece of shell on it all the time.

Weston Bedell: We get that sometimes, but not as much with a circle hook.

Tom Rowland: Definitely — sometimes big chain.

Wes Bedell: When they grab it just right, they'll miss the hook and just get a leg or a corner — it's rare, but it happens. We call that the drive-by.

Getting Hooked Up with Clay Guida

Tom Rowland: So how did you guys get hooked up with Clay Guida?

Wes Bedell: I met Clay at a music festival around 2016. I knew he liked fishing — a friend of mine in Naples had taken him out a couple of times, and I knew he was going to be there. We walked up to the keg at the same time — he was there to get a beer, I introduced myself, and we started talking about fishing instantly while watching this killer music festival backstage, getting to know each other. After that we kept in touch on Instagram, and I mentioned that his parents were in the market for a house in Cape Coral around that time. I told him, if you're ever in town, give me a call and let's go fishing. The first time I took him out in the skiff he took his shirt off immediately — it was wintertime, crystal-clear water — and I said, “Hey, Clay, I got two redfish on the clock coming right at you.” He didn't hesitate — hit him right in the head. I said, “Clay, let him get a little closer.” He's very aggressive on the boat — I'm sure that comes with the UFC and wrestling, he just wants to hold it right now. We love his energy — he's an all-around great guy, been really great to our family, and we love him. He's like a brother.

Tom Rowland: He's a great dude. And so you've hosted some of his trips?

Wes Bedell: We're the hosts of the trip — we have one when we get back on Sunday, actually. I'm not totally sure who he's bringing, maybe some Real Tree guys, maybe the Gator Cooler guys — he didn't specify, just said he's bringing a couple of guys who want to catch some permit.

Tom Rowland: That sounds fun. He's incredible with his career, the number of fights he's had in the UFC.

Wes Bedell: It's incredible — he's an animal.

Tom Rowland: And the durability and longevity — most UFC guys are done in their forties, that doesn't usually happen.

Wes Bedell: He's not a spring chicken.

Tom Rowland: Him and Jim Miller right now — that's insane, especially since Cowboy Cerrone just retired. He was one of the three guys with the most fights, and they put Cerrone up against Jim Miller — that was a tough fight, two veterans.

Tom Rowland: Were you guys UFC fans before you fished with Clay?

Weston Bedell: Yeah — but once we met Clay, I started watching him more, followed him on Instagram, and saw a video of what his coach, or his brother, does to him before a fight — slaps him in the face really quick. I thought, why did you become friends with this guy?

Tom Rowland: Did he burp? Have you seen the one where he burps mid-fight, all the time?

Wes Bedell: I've been waiting for him to burp on the boat, but apparently fishing doesn't get the same reaction as fighting.

Weston Bedell: That's just so funny — the burps and the slapping. When I saw that, I thought, I kind of want to take him fishing, but I don't want him doing that to a fish. But we took him on the boat, and the last permit he got with us was a straight monster. On the ride back, my dad and my brother were up in the tower, and I was sitting down there with him, and we just started talking about fishing and his love for it and my love for it. He said he doesn't understand anybody who couldn't like fishing — that it's so cool and special that our family gets to be out here doing this together. I told him I was glad he was there too — it was super special.

Tom Rowland: It's funny with people like Clay — well, there aren't very many people like Clay. What I mean is, high-level martial artists, people who are straight-up assassins, but he doesn't act like that — he's the most low-key, nicest guy. I've met quite a few guys of that caliber, and they're all like that. They know they could kill you, so there's no reason for them to have a big ego. I've introduced my wife to some of the fighters and she'll say, “That guy's a fighter? But he's so nice.” I say, why would he have any reason not to be nice?

First Time at ICAST — Chasing a Sponsor

Tom Rowland: So we're sitting here at ICAST — is this your first time?

Wes Bedell: First time. I walked into one about five years ago — I've had invites the last five years, every other year, and I'd always blow it off to go fish.

Tom Rowland: Well, it is a good time to fish.

Wes Bedell: Everybody's here. I have a guide buddy in Biscayne Bay who'd call me every year — “Everybody's at ICAST, they're tailing, we've got every flat to ourselves, no one around.” I kept falling into that — let's go fishing during ICAST — and it went like that every year. But this time was special. The boys are getting a little older, taking on the business, and it's time to get our foot in the door, do a lap, and see what we can do here.

Tom Rowland: Do you have any expectations, or any idea what's on the other side of that door?

Perry Bedell: We care, but honestly, no — it's going to be a bit of a surprise. Kind of looking forward to it, though. Super excited.

Tom Rowland: Anything specific you're trying to accomplish here?

Wes Bedell: We would love a real sponsor. That's kind of the goal of this trip, especially with three boats — we're getting ready to outfit a lot of hands with some reels, and that's one thing we just can't get a foothold on. Nobody's letting anybody in these days, so it's very hard to get a foot in the door.

Tom Rowland: One thing that's changed from twenty years ago is the availability of product the last few years has been really hard — even for the customer trying to buy it. Twenty years ago there were times anybody could just say, “You want to help us field-test this?”

Wes Bedell: I was on Quantum years ago, back when that started. I had Charlie as my rep, and what happened was I did a TV show — not my own — and I didn't have my Quantums with me, I brought some personal reels instead, because we were fishing for African pompano and I only had some 2000s and 3000s, nothing much bigger at the time. He saw the show and I got a nice email the next day about why it didn't happen. I said, well, that wasn't my show. He said that doesn't really matter. He wasn't happy about it. That was probably twenty years ago.

Tom Rowland: That's the good lesson you teach the boys — nothing's for free. When somebody hands you a deal, make sure you understand what they're asking in return. Is this exclusive? Am I not supposed to be seen with anything else? If you just communicate that in advance and everybody understands — “just use those reels, send me a report on how they're doing in six months, send them back, let me see the damage you caused, try to blow them up” — then you understand it's not an exclusive thing. Both parties understanding the expectations of that relationship is a really big one, because it can easily go wrong.

Wes Bedell: Just like that — a dumb mistake like that. I didn't even think about it, and he did, and it backfired on me. So here we are — we have Shimanos, we have Daiwas, we have Penn on the boat. It's just what we can get the last couple of years, and it's been very hard.

Tom Rowland: It's been hard to get not just reels, but everything.

Wes Bedell: Hooks, braid.

Tom Rowland: Building materials, trolling motors — everything. It's like the house being built across the street from mine — it goes fast for three weeks and then just stops for three or four weeks. I asked the builder why, and he said, “We just run out of whatever we're waiting on” — you get to where it's time for the tile and there's no tile, so you can't do the next step. It holds up the whole job.

Wes Bedell: Now we're waiting on appliances too.

Tom Rowland: It happens with the boating industry too — motors have been hard to get.

Wes Bedell: We just found some — took three years. We're picking them up in December, for our new boat.

Tom Rowland: And how's the build on the new boat gone?

Wes Bedell: It's a slow process — couldn't find core, couldn't find fiberglass, that trickled down too. We've been building our custom 30-foot boat for the first three years in June. We just found engines — we're almost done, on the home stretch. It's been a long time coming.

Tom Rowland: That seems tough. So who gets the new boat?

Wes Bedell: I'm gonna say that's gonna be me — definitely, long time coming for this one. I'm definitely going all in on that. And I'm sure we'll take turns, too, because something I wanted while raising them was to never make them a one-trick pony — never just the backcountry guy or the offshore guy. I wanted them to adapt and take on a little bit of everything. When it's not blowing, we go offshore; when it's blowing, we hide in the coast. There's always something to do, always some kind of fish to go after. That was one thing I tried to teach them — be very versatile and go with whatever's available.

Red Tide, Water Issues, and the Redfish Closure

Tom Rowland: How have water issues affected you guys over the last few years?

Wes Bedell: We haven't had an issue since around 2018 — that was the last really bad one, the red tide. It was killing dolphins and manatees, and we basically had to pick up our whole operation and start guiding down by the Glades — traveling forty miles south just to go to work.

Tom Rowland: Traveling by trailer?

Wes Bedell: Trailer, yeah — because we'd go out on a charter and there'd be dead catfish and mullet floating around. You can't take people out in that.

Tom Rowland: I'd heard some people say they were able to fish, but they had to go way out — a hundred miles or something.

Wes Bedell: We'd have to adapt with a recirculating livewell to keep our pilchards alive, because driving through that water, not all your bait survives. It was a serious learning curve we had to adapt to. But you can't say no when you have to go.

Tom Rowland: Did you notice anything that's helped keep the water clean since, or are we just being lucky right now?

Wes Bedell: We've definitely had a lot more bait in our area the last couple of years. Our pilchards used to be very seasonal — they'd all die off, then we'd get a whole new batch, and a red tide would kill that whole batch along the beaches, and we'd wait for the next season to get the next ones. This year we really haven't had a problem — we've had consistent pilchards pretty much all year.

Tom Rowland: It's a really disturbing thing when the bait dies — some fish are smart or lucky enough to move out of it, or just weren't there to begin with, but when the bait dies, that's very disturbing. When the red tide would kill off a whole hatch, what did it look like afterward? Does the bait come back gradually, or all at once?

Wes Bedell: It seems like last year it came back right after that 2018 event — that 2018/2019/2020 combo, it was just flooded, you could have Stevie Wonder throw a cast net and catch bait. You could walk on it every morning, as far as you could see — just pearls, and then you're off fishing. It seemed to carry over for about a year, and they never really left or died off — there were littler ones mixed in, but you had different generations of pilchards in the same area all making it through, the quarter-inch ones and the three-eighths ones, all in the same area.

Tom Rowland: I wonder why it was so good after that.

Wes Bedell: Not sure — maybe those guys were doing something to keep the water clean, because we haven't had a bloom since 2018. So I'm gonna say that's either Captains For Clean Water or luck.

Weston Bedell: Or both.

Tom Rowland: There's nothing wrong with both — Captains For Clean Water has certainly done a lot of great work, and then luck and weather can be a huge factor. If they get a whole ton of rain, that's what starts it — then it goes out both sides of the state, and then a cold front brings the northwest blow and it trickles all the way down. That's where a lot of people have a hard time understanding the water problems — like, wait, there's too much water on one side but the Everglades don't have any, and Flamingo has no water. It's crazy. And redfish are still closed in your region?

Wes Bedell: Closed in our region, further notice, as of the FWC — can't harvest them. There's almost a line in the sand right at the Marco River where you can keep them. It's so weird, because we fish this whole area, but we can't bring a redfish or a snook over this imaginary line, which is ironically right where our ramp is. Some guys do bring reds in, and it depends on which FWC officer is at the ramp that day — some will give you a ticket, some will say, you're on the line, you're okay.

Perry Bedell: We don't kill anything.

Tom Rowland: What do you guys think about no-harvest on snook and redfish?

Wes Bedell: No harvest — snook, redfish, or permit, ever.

Tom Rowland: So what do you keep?

Perry Bedell: Snappers, sheepshead, triple tail, trout, cobia.

Tom Rowland: What's your snapper fishing like — what kind are you targeting?

Weston Bedell: Mostly mangrove and lane snappers.

Tom Rowland: Big mangroves up there — that's my favorite eating fish.

Weston Bedell: That's my favorite snapper too.

Wes Bedell: That's the sweet meat.

Tom Rowland: If you asked me what one fish I'd just eat, that would be it — mangrove snapper. How do you guys like to cook them?

Wes Bedell: Fish tacos — crunchy fish tacos.

Tom Rowland: Where's the crunch coming from?

Wes Bedell: You go to Publix and buy every single breading they have, mix it all together, do an egg wash, then the breading, back to back, golden brown, get a flour tortilla, all your goodies, the fried fish, and you've got a crunchy fish taco.

Tom Rowland: Walk me through the egg wash — egg wash first, then the batter?

Wes Bedell: Egg wash, then back to back into the breading, golden brown, then guac and all your goodies. Crowd pleaser.

Tom Rowland: One thing I like — I started doing this with my gray snapper, and with mutton snapper too — take the filet straight off, scales still on, put it on the grill scales-down.

Wes Bedell: I've heard of that trick so many times, never tried it.

Tom Rowland: We do it with redfish in Louisiana — redfish on the half shell, that's the first time I ever had it. You filet the redfish straight off, trim it, but leave the scales down, put it on the grill with butter, Worcestershire, Cajun spices, paint that on, scales down, don't move it. The scales turn black — looks like you're burning it — but you pull it off, pick up one half, and if it breaks in half cleanly it's perfectly ready. Then you take a fork, all the meat comes off the burnt skin, and there's all this caramelized fat underneath that almost pours onto the filet. It's fantastic with mutton snapper, fantastic with gray snapper too — maybe don't try it with all of them, or you'll tear the grill up. It has to be a heavy-scaled fish, like a mutton or a triple tail.

Wes Bedell: I haven't done that with triple tail, but they have a thin little scale — they're a rough, prehistoric-looking fish, but tripletail is one of the best meats there is.

Tom Rowland: If I had to eat one fish, that would be it.

Wes Bedell: Tripletail, yeah — and hog snapper. We had a really rough year on tripletail last year — only got one keeper, which was weird because the year before it was gangbusters, three ten-pounders on every trap.

Tom Rowland: That's interesting — we filmed two, maybe three tripletail shows because it was so good right around the Flamingo area, they were everywhere.

Wes Bedell: Everywhere. I kept telling the boys, we're gonna pay for this — we were averaging two ten-pounders a half day from our clients.

Tom Rowland: Do you think the regulation change ties back to that — they bumped the size limit up, and then the next year was fantastic?

Wes Bedell: I was telling the boys as it was happening — I'd seen this scenario once before a few years back, though I can't remember which year. There was one good year with big ones, ten-to-fifteen pounders everywhere, and then the next year, not even little ones, not even the next generation. It wasn't until I saw that pattern repeat that I started really wondering what happened to those fish — are they getting eaten, are they leaving the area? There's no rhyme or reason to them, they're just floating around — we've even seen them floating on channel markers. Perry scooped one with a net off a floating restaurant menu a couple of years ago. It was the craziest thing.

Tom Rowland: If they find anything, they're gonna hang around. I want to come back to the log book, but when we were fishing for tripletail, they had this red spot on them — bigger than a half-dollar, so red you could see it from a distance on the dark fish floating out there. We caught these fish and I thought, what is this red thing? I thought it was going to be a sore, but it wasn't — it was more like an irritated area, like they'd been rubbing up against something. Rich thought maybe they'd gotten sunburned. I asked a couple of different scientists and they didn't know what it was — I sent pictures of an entire two-mile stretch where every single fish had this mark, and I haven't really seen it like that since — not on everyone like that.

Wes Bedell: We have pictures of some with big red scars like that — the one you and I caught coming off on that trip. I don't know, maybe he got hit by a shark or something and a tiger came up and gave him a little nip. We have a few like that, not always in the same spot — one was long and skinny, others were rounder. We have a picture of one we called Scarface — it looks fresh, like they've been rubbing up against a buoy all day on the tide.

Tom Rowland: And it leaves a mark, like if you did that with your hand, you'd have a red mark, and the scales are kind of knocked off a little. I asked a couple of biologists and they didn't know either. If I can't find them now, I'll send you the pictures.

Wes Bedell: I'd like to see them — I know a couple too.

Tom Rowland: That's what this podcast can be good for — somebody out there listening might know exactly what that is and send me an email. I don't think I've ever talked about it on the show before.

Keeping a Log Book — Digital and Analog

Tom Rowland: So, the log book you mentioned — have you kept one your whole career?

Wes Bedell: Not necessarily — I mostly use my pictures now, and a lot of it's in my head, memories of scenarios that have played out before.

Tom Rowland: But even if you have a picture and write on the back somebody's name, the Marquesas, incoming tide, 10:30, June 12th — you file that away, and later you pick it up and go, “June 12th, incoming tide — oh yeah, I was on this flat, I forgot I even used to fish there.” I was wondering if you had a book, and if you're sharing it with your boys.

Wes Bedell: A hundred percent.

Tom Rowland: And do they realize the value of what they're looking at?

Perry Bedell: Most certainly.

Tom Rowland: And what do you do with it — do you go check those spots out?

Perry Bedell: Oh yeah — some of them aren't going to be good anymore, and some are going to be exactly what he wrote down twenty years ago, perfect.

Tom Rowland: Do you guys keep a log book, or…?

Perry Bedell: Honestly, my pictures do a great job. I'll go back through them, look at the time, pull up the tide app for when it was caught and where it was, and put it together that way.

Tom Rowland: That's such an incredible advantage.

Wes Bedell: They have it so good — we never had that. We had the old cardboard, the Florida Sportsman tide book. My mentor, Simon Becker, told me, “I'm trying to write down everything, and I can't keep up.” He said, “Look, you don't need four pages of notes after a charter — all you need is where you were and what time you caught the fish.” Then you go back and look at the chart — the tide was going out at that time, and that's really all the information you need. When you take a picture like that, you could probably have your GPS location on it too, and some apps will tell you exactly where you were if you put a picture in.

Tom Rowland: You don't want that information getting out.

Wes Bedell: No, but some people use it like social media — that stuff can backfire. The boys actually have a friend back home where this whole scenario played out — a client sent a captain a picture of a fish he caught with somebody else, and all that intel was right there on the photo, where he caught it, what time. And guess who showed up there the next day? That captain, with that client.

Tom Rowland: That's a tough one when the captain and the client show up. I had a guy one time, before cell phones, who kept this little bag next to him the whole trip, and I thought there was a gun in it. Turned out it was a GPS, and he was trying to track us the whole way. I told him, if you'd just told me you were trying to learn your way around, I'd have shown you — but this is a really bad way to go about it. Now they can do that with their phone all the time. I guess it's what you do with the information that matters.

Perry Bedell: It's only half the battle.

Wes Bedell: It really is. We've actually even stopped fishing some local spots this month because it's kind of backfired — people see our Instagram, then call, and I see the area code on the phone, get their info with the credit card, the zip code, and I think, “I just moved here and bought a 24-foot boat, I'm just trying to figure this out.” Thank you for telling me that — now I'm going to decline. We've turned down three charters this month just because of people trying to figure out what we're doing and where.

Tom Rowland: I get a lot of people asking that question — “I'm moving to a new area, how do I learn how to do this?” One thing I tell them: you could book a guide, but tell them upfront, “I just moved here, I want to be able to run around without running aground, I don't want to mess anybody up or go to anybody's spots — I want to learn how to run around here and find spots for myself.” If somebody came to you with that angle, would you be more likely to take them?

Wes Bedell: Probably not, honestly. You could show them a community hole, the bait spot, sometimes — but we don't really come across people with that motive, unfortunately. People want our permit — “I want to learn how to find these for myself, and I want you to show me, and I'll pay you a one-time fee for showing me where these are.”

Tom Rowland: But there's more to it than just knowing where they are.

Wes Bedell: There really is. We could take somebody out there one time and give them the GPS numbers, but are they going to be able to use the tactics we've all built on these fish for decades? Probably not — they're going to lose every one, spend $200 on crabs, and go home and get yelled at by the wife. I don't even want to take it that far, because what we have is very, very special, and we'd like to keep it where it is.

Tom Rowland: I believe it.

Passing the Torch

Tom Rowland: So what does the future look like for you guys?

Weston Bedell: I'd say pretty bright. We've got this offshore boat being built, and that Privateer he mentioned is in the shop right now getting completely rebuilt — new fiberglass and everything — so that thing's going to be bulletproof. And then we have the Caballo — we're on the fence about selling it or rebuilding it, but I'd like to get it rebuilt. Throughout the years you'll definitely get a second wind once we get this big boat, and we'll all be working on that as much as we can, hopefully get a fleet going eventually, and maybe my kids or his kids keep it going in the future. But like you said earlier, he likes fishing, he wants to be a captain, and he might want to do a separate thing someday — never know.

Tom Rowland: Never know. A lot of times people want to move away from an area because it's small, or they want something different. But if you love the area and don't want to leave, what could be better than being a fishing guide in a place like Naples or Key West? Would you rather sell insurance in Key West, or be a fishing guide?

Wes Bedell: That's right. And I've paid my dues — passed the torch to them, and now it's their turn to pick up the pieces and put them together. I've already done all the hard work and paid my dues through time, and now it's theirs. My clients rant and rave about them — what an incredible team they are — and it just makes me proud. It's obvious.

Tom Rowland: It comes through in your posts. I wish you guys the best. How would somebody go fishing with any or all of you?

Perry Bedell: Go to our website, naplesoffshorefishingcharters.com — our phone numbers are there, and a whole booking system to make it easy.

Tom Rowland: And the Instagram?

Wes Bedell: On a Mission Fishing Charters. And each of us has our own too.

Wes Bedell: Captain Wes Bedell.

Weston Bedell: Mine is Captain Weston Bedell.

Perry Bedell: Mine's Captain Perry Bedell.

Tom Rowland: Oh, man, you guys didn't want to deviate.

Wes Bedell: No, no — keep it easy.

Tom Rowland: That's great. Well, I'd love to do that permit fishing with you sometime — maybe I'll see if I can get Clay to bring me along.

Wes Bedell: Absolutely, we would love that.

Tom Rowland: I'm a permit aficionado — I love them, I don't care where I catch them, six inches of water or 600 feet of water, I like them all the same.

Wes Bedell: We'll put you on there — you'll be hooked up in no time.

Tom Rowland: Alright, well, thanks, guys. I hope you have a great show at ICAST, and we'll see you on the boat one of these days.

Weston Bedell: Awesome, thank you for having us.

Wes Bedell: Thank you so much.