Probably like any business Reece, you need to calculate your expenses per trip and then add a percentage on top. A lot of things to consider witha boat wear and tear maintenance, licences,taxes etc. Then your gear, tackle bait and fuel. But being a niche market I would expect a strong interest and you could charge accordingly.

 The idea is brillant, the execution is bloody difficult.

Get a solid business plan together. If you dont know how then find out.

My best friend did just what you are suggesting and i followed his progress for years. (free trips out for me). 

If you would like to hear what happened it will cost you a couple of beers so PM me.

 deep drop is something id like to do but would probably be the once not sure how many people would do return trips, would there be an option for other sorts of fishing?

i would think you would get better numbers from perth or hillarys, maybe a small shuttle bus pick up at the clients expense? 

as for a price, i know how much i would want to pay but at the end of the day its what you need people to pay, 4 person charter, gear supplied, all day, fish filleted and shuttle bus to lano @ $300+ each = $1200 probably not much left after expenses. is there room for 6 on board?

hope you get it up and running as you no your deep drop stuff 

PS id be happy to do a sample trip if you need 

good luck

 If the current is ripping and hard to have more than 3 lines in the water at the same time

Lancelin is a great idea - we used to go there a bit years ago before the guy had issues on and off the water.

$300 would be a good price for deep drop, and set it at $1200 for the boat.

Keeping numbers sensible is a good idea.

Try and do something specialised, like educating people on how to use plastics or jigs.

$250 would be a good demersal price.

Add jigging for fresh bait etc on the way - makes the punter feel like they are catching early on.

Try and get some reliable sambo etc spots to have some fun too - maybe not good to eat - but looks good for a photo and some fun.

All the best - keep us updated.

I certainly like the idea.

and I think it would be a pretty popular idea for other boat owners.

It's something I would like to do in my boat but just don't have the setup...sounder gear etc. and I'm sure there are many others plenty even on this site that are in the same boat.

Like others have said. it would be a niche market. (which makes business hard) think your demersal charters would be your bread and butter.... you are not getting "dad and his 12year old son on their first fishing trip" the majority is experienced fishers looking for bigger better deeper etc.

Not sure of your experience in business. (If you have a 10m cat you seem to be doing something right ! :)
however if I could give anyone starting out advice...not that I am a business guru it would be start with the basics.

I own and run my own small business and would say leave the "pick ups and drop offs" stick to core business ...at least at the start. (even if it's demersal charters first to establish) It's hard getting started properly in a business to say the least with out worrying about every detail. start with the basics once your've got that then branch out.

BTW ...I love the idea of tax deductable fishing gear ...:)

 Watch out for those pinging bastards

 I reckon it would be a pretty hard gig and then there’s the red tape . I presume the following info is relevant to what you want to do and you need to buy a existing license , I wonder they’d be worth ? just gotta crunch the numbers I guess 

This licences charter boat-based fishing activities where fish can be taken home at the end of the tour. We have restricted the number of fishing tour licences granted to protect our valuable fish resources and no new licences will be issued.

http://www.fish.wa.gov.au/Fishing-and-Aquaculture/Recreational-Fishing/Pages/Charter-Boats.aspx

Sound like a good idea, but you need the numbers for it to pay.

Guessing you would burn $300 in fuel, $100 for bait tackle, ice, food, $500 wages, $200 maintanance, add in the other costs and I think you would be break even with 4 pax at $350 or $1400 for the boat.

 I think biggest drama is gaining a FTOL. as chriss said fisheries will not issue any new FTOLS so you would have to buy an existing one that would be up for sale and they def arent cheap! If you need a hand possibly sourcing one let me know one of my old cray bosses seems to have his finger on whos got what and might be able to source one!

Lano would be the perfect spot with ledge south n wedge north and out to the banks! If you know pickle or twiggyin lano hve a chat to them they might be able to help out with areas out there. Good luck. Niche tours are the go!

Also you might need to put stability sponsons on the sides of your boat. Laurie had to fork out 10k to fit them to his7.8m to do small charrters ofc his boat as per safety regs with marine safety and DPI.

maybebuzz laurie up here at murch boat hire n hve chat bout it.

Doesn't the skipper get paid haha

 Years ago I use to go on a charter out of lancelin great bloke great knowlage but due to the weather he had to cancell charters so many times he cancelled three in a row on us that's why he shut it down 

 A lot of good feed back here thanks guys. I guess I should have added a bit more info. Already own the boat. It use to be a charter boat out of point Sampson and has been at barrow as crew transfer boat for a few years. Also already have the FTOL  with a range from Kalbarri to windy harbour. I will be skippering my self and have the skipper I worked for years ago to cover if I'm not home. 

Iv got the demersals side covered it's just weather or not to look or how often to run a deep drop day. I would also look at fads/marlin trolling at the same time 

Also open to any other suggestions that other charter boats arnt covering that you would like to see happen

thanks again guys

Being a deckie in Many Sydney charters .. They're a few ways to look at this situation .  what you guys need to understand customers are paying for a package yes fish is inportant, but the availability of ice , fish cleaning service , clean bags for customer  to take fish home along with a few reciepe papers for certain fish goes along way.

 When I was working on a a few sydneybharbour based boats we would do a big day off shore with no luck . I would come back inside throw wetty on and get a few travelly , abs and Crays . I would dunk fish in ice slurry and clean a prepair a plate of sushimi. Customer would concider just a simple plate  like this to be worth they're $1200 day. And I was given a $100 for service 

 A few other fall back plains would be showing them whale , seals, Dolphins on way in and out. Most hardcore fisherman don't go on charters as they have access to own boats . Remember the day out is an experience based anything new to the customers earns you bonus points . You can get more people on board but only 3-4 rods at a time . In Sydney guys also put a limit on amount of fish taken which is normally half of them fisheries rules to preserve the stock.

5 20kg fish provides a lot of meat and more than often customer are overwhelmed with amont and always offer some back to deackon and skiper

message me if you need any more help

 Deckies wanting to volunteer

 Reputation brings business,

if your clients catch good fish regularly they will tell their mates who will tell their mates, word of mouth beats any form of advertising it also dictates what you can charge the better the catch rate the more people will pay. 

If your ever looking for a Deckie on a social deep drop day reece let me know, would love to give it a crack. 

Emu Export vending machine on board, $5 a chook, absolute gold mine right there!

Good luck Reece, you've never had problems finding the fish so this should be a successful venture I'd say.

Daisy Day

  I'd pay to do a deep drop day out. Great idea I reckon 

Granted a deep drop charter is not every day event but is it sustainable? My understanding is that most of the targeted deep drop species are slow growing. I don't know one way or the other just putting it out there?

 I feel there is defenatly a market there but i would be focusing on the standard charter options and the deep drop is an additional service you can offer for a more premium dollar. I believe the smaller charters can charge more then the big guys anyway as you get a much more personalised experience and generally you have a lot more say in what you want to target and the style of fishing yiu want to do.

What nm distance is it surveyed to as this could limit you a bit but im sure you have looked at that.

Cheers

Rod

A 10m cat with twin 275's doing 25 knots will not get much better than 0.6 km per litre?

Say 200 km round trip allowing for a bit of other stuff, at $1.30 / L and you have over $400 in go juice. We use almost this much in Langas 285 Boston on big deep drop trips.

For 4 punters, allowing for skipper and deckie wages, bait, wear tear, oil, and profit (why give up your best deep drop spots for nothing....you gotta make profit or else you may as well just keep taking mates out) and I recon it will have to be north of $400 eachpunter to make sense.

Next issue is every prick on board will have their iPhones on with either Navionics on with tracking or gps on their photos, so after a few trips, your gonna have plenty of company on your spots.......

Not easy.

pm sent 

I believe JohnF is close to the money with his "off the top of his head" calculations for a deep drop day. That puts the cost per punter at say $500.00. Now to get to decent deep drop grounds is going to take a few hours of steaming and that means that people are going to have an early start to allow for long travelling time and possible wind changes.

I don't think the fee of $500 is going to be to much for this niche market as long as the day is of interesting things to do coming and going, as has been said look at he whales dolphins etc .

Also allow people to look at the sounder screen and give then a bit of an education on what the sounder is showing. If no fish are caught then the day can still be thought of having good value by the additional activities that have been put on at no additional cost (to the charter operator)

All (I believe) those who go out on charters want to come home with fish that can't be guaranteed of course to offset this downer if the people have had a good entertaining day they have come home with something.

Just my humble view on things that can make a fishless day on a charter end with a good feeling.

 One thing to keep in mind is how far people book is advance and weather.

what I see as a big issue is you will get a nice day of weather for deep drop but the customers you have want to do demersals only, or you have 8 or so onboard so too many for it. Or you have guys wanting to do deep drop and paid for it only to find out the weather doesn't suit or you get out there and it's a ripping current and not able to reach the bottom. You could quite quickly damage your reputation of this happens a few times. Not something you need early on in business! 

im with John F, fuel is a big ticket item, those donks will use 3ltr a mile or more. 35 mile out and back plus 10 mile for looking about, 80 mile a day 24trs of fuel. Well over $300 a day in juice. I know the boat you bought, nice rig! But will use some serious juice. Cruise speed may be 25-28 knots but that's still almost a 90 minute steam. If you find fish each drift is normally 30 min per drift.

$500 each and you're potentially coming home with 10-15 maybe even 20kgs of fish fillets? money well spent i reckon at about $30 a kg approx. I guess you'd have to be careful if you got a few big Bass Grouper that you didn't go over the limit.

Lock up the phones and have a camera onboard with bulk USB's of around 1Gig to upload the day's photo's for all to share as a part of the cost.

Windsurfing capital of the world. Say no more. I spent 4 years out of Ledge Point on a cray boat. It blows its arse off. Plus I couldn't run a charter and give up all my hard earnt spots to some geek with an app. $250 for a bunch of deep drop GPS spots...and you get a bonus free days fishing!! Plus no money in chartering. I don't know anyone that has ever made money out of it.

 just heard that a charter boat may be starting out of lano, is this your boat?

 One of the charters in Mandurah make you all hand over your phones when you come on board

 Nah mate not me. I'm still looking at boat options and I think it may be running down south now to link in with a commercial set up

 I would have thought the typical client of a deep drop charter would be someone that can't get there on their own. Be that through confidence or unsuitable boat so even if they noted spots you stopped at they still won't be out there.

I have a 6.4m boat and wouldn't head wide unless there were some pretty special conditions predicted for the whole day so a charter would be pretty much my only sensible option.

 If theres only 4 punters, why do you need a deckie?

Or is it a safety regulation? 

Yeh I'd have a decky but he's partners in the set up 

 I am interested and would go demersal 4- 6 times a year regardless of cost.I have been on many charters and find they move a lot.near the end half the punters have lost interest in dropping and winding up again.

 That's called fishing

I want a deep drop charter that does not have to travel too far, is not too deep, you only have to drop once to load up all 3 hooks with plus 30 kg ooglies, the beer is cold, the deckie is from Sweeden, her name is Helga and she has big "personalities" and does not wear panties, the fish are filleted and vac packed by the time you step off the boat and into your limo which takes you home.

I would have no problems handing over $50 for that. Let me know when the first charter is.

Cheers

Sorry Reece, I know I said I was a certain starter, but I now cant make it, I did not get paid on Friday, am down to my last 50 cents, missus want me to look after the kids, the dog ate my homework......hahaha.