You will be in one of those small (29”) boat of the local “snorkeling and fishing” fleet that you see moored at the beach. My crew were Leo and Reyes and they were really great. First we went to catch live sardines by the beach (the boat had a live well, which was a pleasant surprise), then went maybe a kilometer out of the reef to the bottom fishing spot they had on GPS (we decided to skip trolling because of sargassum and generally because trolling is like one bite over 8 hours). Bottom fishing gear provided was handheld circular winding rigs (no rod or reel) with very thick line, so I used my own rod with 15lb braid, 30lb fluoro leader and a 40g clarkspoon jig, to which I added a 1.5 foot-long fluoro leader with 2/0 hook, for live sardine. That worked really well - I caught 5 jacks in about 30 min, the largest was 5lb and gave me an awesome fight. Meanwhile handheld rigs caught one small triggerfish.
Suggestion: floating sargassum patches, as annoying as they are, may hold some nice candidates for light spinning or even fly fishing. I feel like casting spoons or flies around sargassum patches could be productive. This is based on the fact that one small jack hit my jig (not the live bait!) as long as I cast it out near sargassum patches.
So, I’d strongly suggest that the company keep Leo and Reyes at all cost (best people ever) but upgrade their bottom fishing gear. Another room for improvement would be anchor - ours was a rusty monster made out of rebar, and dragged continuously. The crew worked really hard to make it better but really, a good anchor with a heavy chain leader would be a proper solution.
All that said, I would definitely go bottom fishing with Leo and Reyes again!
You will be in one of those small (29”) boat of the local “snorkeling and fishing” fleet that you see moored at the beach....