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.

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 — 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 — 83% of the charter total, with fishtexasnow's standard 17% 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 17% 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, 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, 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).

For booking a trip or hunt: 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. Payment is required to confirm a booking.

For guide sponsor placements specifically, PayPal and Venmo are also available as an alternative to card.

fishtexasnow keeps a flat 17% of the charter/hunt total; the guide receives the remaining 83% directly to their connected Stripe account, and fishtexasnow absorbs Stripe's processing fee out of its own cut, so that 83% 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 83% 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, bank details, or PayPal/Venmo login are handled entirely by Stripe or PayPal'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, PayPal, Venmo) confirms the payment for you automatically and never exposes your account details to us.