For captains
Start booking more charters today — FREE!
That’s right — your first booking is 100% on us. List a trip for $600, and you get the full $600. Your customer pays $600, you keep $600. No commission, no credit card fees, no gimmicks, no nothing.
After that, once you’ve seen how hard we work to keep your charter booked, you can keep going with zero upfront fees. We simply take 8% of the seats WE sell — and a seat you’d have sailed empty at 92% beats an empty seat at 100%.
- 8% only on what we sell — trips you book yourself cost you nothing
- Your anglers pay the price you set — no booking fee bolted on top to make you look more expensive
- No deposits, no cash at the dock, no chasing anyone for a balance
- Free to list, no exclusivity, no strings attached
Takes a few minutes. You’ll see your page before anyone else can.
What you actually get paid
Say you put up a $1,090 six-pack walleye trip on a date you had nothing booked. You price the boat; we work out the seat price and sell the seats.
| Anglers who book | They each pay | You’re paid |
|---|---|---|
| 3 aboard | $363.34 | $1,002.84 |
| 4 aboard | $272.50 | $1,002.80 |
| 6 aboard | $181.67 | $1,002.84 |
| Nobody books | — | trip is called off, costs you nothing |
Look at the right-hand column. It barely moves. However many anglers turn up, the seat price is your boat price divided between them — so you receive your boat price less our 8%, whether three book or six. You are not paid per head, and a half-full boat does not mean a half-full envelope.
Everyone aboard pays the same final price. Early bookers are charged the single-seat rate and refunded down automatically as the boat fills, so the price only ever falls — which is exactly why the boat fills. You never have to go back to anyone for more money, and neither do we.
Set the fewest anglers you’ll run the trip for. Miss it and the trip cancels itself, everyone is refunded in full, and you have lost nothing but a date you weren’t using.
Where we differ from the big booking sites
If you already list on one, you know the complaints. These are the specific ones we built around.
Our fee is on found money, not on your whole book
8% on seats you would have sailed empty. Trips you sell yourself cost you nothing, because we are not involved in them. Compare that with paying a commission on every booking you take, including the customers you brought yourself.
You cannot pay us for better placement
Some sites rank you higher if you agree to a higher commission. Ours is a flat 8% and there is no version of this where money moves you up the page. Placement comes from anglers saying they’d fish with you again, and from answering your messages.
No toll on your repeat customers
Somebody who found you through FishSplit and wants to come back next year can ring you directly. We don’t hide phone numbers, we don’t police your messages, and we don’t charge you for a customer you have already earned.
No deposits, and no cash at the dock
Anglers pay the full amount to FishSplit when they book. We hold it, and it reaches you after the trip has run. You are never chasing a balance on the morning of a charter.
Weather is a refund, not a clawback
Because we are still holding the money when you call it off, cancelling gives it straight back to the angler. Nobody asks you to return money that already landed in your account, and it costs you nothing.
When a group books your boat, you’re paid in full either way
The other half of FishSplit is groups who have already booked a boat selling their spare seats. If that is your charter, this costs you nothing and changes nothing: you are paid exactly what you would have been, and it is your customer’s bill that drops, not your payout. We are straight about that — there is no extra money in it for you, just a group who can afford to come back.
Your calendar and your prices stay yours
You price the whole boat and we work out the per-seat figure. Nothing is bookable unless you have said that date is real. There is no availability calendar to keep fed — you confirm each date yourself.
How you get listed
- Tell us who you are. Name, email, home port. That is this form below, and it is the whole sign-up.
- Build your page. Photos of the boat, what people catch with you, the specs, what’s included, your house rules and your cancellation policy. We email you a link that opens it — no password to set.
- Add your trips. Price each one by the boat. Tick “can be split” on any trip you’re happy to sell by the seat.
- Set up payouts. A short Stripe form so money can reach your bank. Your page stays private until this is done. A Book button we can’t honour is worse than no page at all.
Then you publish it, and you can unpublish it again any time. Nothing about this is exclusive — keep listing wherever else you list.
What captains say
Example layout. These are placeholder quotes showing how real ones will sit — FishSplit has not launched yet.
“I had four on the boat and two seats doing nothing. Now those two pay for my fuel and I never had to ring anybody to fill them.”
“The other site wanted a cut of every trip I sold, including the regulars I have had for nine years. This one only touches the empty seats. That is the whole difference.”
“Weather cancelled us twice in June. Both times the money went straight back to the anglers and nobody came after me for it. That is worth a lot in the spring.”
Being straight with you: we are new
FishSplit is starting on Lake Erie for the spring 2027 season, out of the western basin ports. The quotes above are marked as examples because that is what they are — we would rather show you the shape of the page than borrow praise we haven’t earned.
What we can tell you is that the money side is finished and tested: anglers pay us, we hold it, and payouts and refunds both work. And that a handful of captains will be on the site when the first anglers arrive. Being one of them is worth more than being the four-hundredth on a big site.
Questions first? hello@fishsplit.com reaches a person, not a queue.
List your charter
We’ll email you a link that opens your page. You can fill it in over a few evenings — nothing goes public until you say so.