Frequently asked questions

A Texas-only marketplace for booking fishing charters (inshore, including surf fishing and land-based shark fishing; offshore; freshwater) and hunts (whitetail, turkey, waterfowl, hog, dove, exotic) directly with local guides and outfitters. No phone tag, book and pay online.

No. We're an independent, Texas-built marketplace, not a state entity or agency.

No, you can book as a guest with just your name, email, and phone. Creating an account just makes it easier to see your booking history in one place under My bookings.

If you create an account, we'll send a verification link, but it's not required; your account works immediately either way. Your account page shows a reminder banner until you click the link.

Browse trips, filter by fishing or hunting and by category, pick an open date on the trip page, and pay online. You'll get a confirmation email once payment succeeds.

Yes — at checkout you can optionally add a donation to one of our partner charities, alongside your trip payment. 100% of your donation goes to the charity; it's charged in the same payment as your trip, and if your booking is later cancelled and refunded, your donation is refunded right along with it.

Cancellations are handled by your guide; message them through the booking page. If they cancel a paid booking on your behalf, you're refunded in full back to your original payment method automatically.

Yes. For things like weather, a guide can reschedule your booking to another open date on the same trip instead of cancelling it outright. You'll get an email if that happens.

Yes, each booking has a message thread with your guide, visible on the booking page.

Yes — every trip page has an “Ask a question” button. No account needed, just your name and email. You'll get an email with a link to the conversation, and another whenever the guide replies.

Yes — a reminder email goes out the day before a confirmed trip with a link back to your booking for the meeting spot and any details from your guide. After the trip, we'll also send a one-time nudge to leave a review if you haven't already.

Sign up with a guide account, then create a trip listing (title, category, location, price, duration, species, what's included) from your My trips dashboard. New guide accounts start pending until approved.

Connect a Stripe account from Payouts. You can't accept paid bookings until Stripe onboarding is complete. Once it is, your share of each booking is transferred to your account automatically — 90% of the charter total, with fishtexasnow's standard 10% commission and Stripe's processing fee both covered on the platform's side, never deducted from your payout.

New guides also get their first 5 bookings commission-free (you keep 100%) — it applies automatically, no signup needed, and switches to the standard 10% once those five are used.

From Availability, open dates one at a time, add many at once over a date range, or set a default weekly pattern (e.g. every weekend) that stays open indefinitely without you having to keep adding more dates. Need time off? Blackout dates block a range across all your trips at once, and always win over your default pattern. Booked dates lock automatically. See Availability help (once signed in as a guide) for a full walkthrough.

Yes — Standing days off (on Availability) marks certain days of the week as never bookable, going forward indefinitely, across all your trips or just one if you limit it. No re-blocking every week. We'll also email you a heads-up ahead of major holidays if a standing day off falls on one, so a high-demand date doesn't quietly go unbooked.

From Availability, switch to My schedule for a calendar view of everything — bookings and blackout days together. Click any day to see who's booked, or subscribe to your own private link (Google Calendar, Apple, or Outlook) so it stays synced automatically wherever you already keep your calendar.

Yes, from Bookings. Cancelling a paid booking triggers a full refund to the angler/hunter automatically; you can also move a booking to a different open date instead.

Yes, from Recommended guides — build your own list of guides you personally trust, so you have somewhere to point a customer if you can't take a trip yourself (blacked out, fully booked, or not your specialty). It's your own list, not a platform ranking.

From Inquiries — every question asked from one of your trip pages shows up there. Reply and the customer gets emailed your answer directly, with no account needed on either side.

Yes, sponsor placements feature your company on the fishing and/or hunting browse pages for a 30-day term, as a large banner (Sponsor tier) or a smaller logo listing (Preferred tier).

Card, plus Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Cash App Pay where available, all through Stripe, so the checkout form automatically offers whichever of those your device/browser supports. This applies to both booking a trip/hunt and guide sponsor placements. Payment is required to confirm a booking.

fishtexasnow keeps a flat 10% of the charter/hunt total; the guide receives the remaining 90% directly to their connected Stripe account, and fishtexasnow absorbs Stripe's processing fee out of its own cut, so that 90% is never reduced further. The split is calculated and shown at booking time, before you pay.

The platform absorbs it, not the guide. Guides always receive a clean 90% of the trip price, with no deductions on their end.

If your booking is cancelled after payment, the full amount is refunded to your original payment method. The platform's commission is reversed along with the guide's share, so you get back exactly what you paid.

No, whichever method you use, your card number or bank details are handled entirely by Stripe's own secure checkout. fishtexasnow never sees or stores any of it, only a payment confirmation reference.

Zelle has no merchant payment API; it's a bank-to-bank transfer with no way for us to confirm or automatically process a payment. Every method we do support (card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Cash App Pay) confirms the payment for you automatically and never exposes your account details to us.