Captain Pete's Fishing Charters

We are a full-time, professional fishing charter operation located in Chesapeake Beach, Maryland from April to December. Fishing is what we do for a living. We don’t have a “day job”. Fishing is it so we’d better be good at it.
Your captain is Pete Ide. He has been fishing area waters working charters since 1981 at the age of 13. He has been a US Coast Guard licensed captain since 1986. From 1981-1993 he worked as a mate and then a captain for Scheible’s Fishing Center, a local company which had several boats. In the spring of ‘93 he bought his first boat, a 44-foot wooden boat, the Fish ‘N’ Fun, which was 33 years old when he bought it. It was old and slow, but fish were plentiful and business was good so he bought the Pelican new in 1998 and finished it that spring. It’s been a great boat up to this point.

When Pete bought the Fish ‘N’ Fun he began taking charters from Smith Creek, Md. It is located about seven miles up the Potomac River from Point Lookout, the southernmost tip of the Western Shore of Maryland. Rockfish were rapidly recouping their numbers which by the late 1980’s were so low the State implemented a moratorium. For several years you couldn’t keep rockfish at all. Rockfishing rapidly improved during the mid-’90’s and was best in the fall. After a few years of pounding the Fish ‘N’ Fun up the Potomac into brisk Northwest winds and heavy chop (common during fall and winter months), the boat landed at Drury’s Marina on St. Jerome’s Creek on the Chesapeake side