Company and Destin History by Olin Marler

Olin Marler Charter Boats was established during 1967. This venture started with a small 38ft vessel with one diesel engine. Through the years it grew to one of the largest individually owned fishing fleet in the state of Florida consisting of five 65 foot and two 50 foot vessels. Also the 65 ft Glass bottom Dolphin Cruise vessels have been added to the fleet, making a total of nine vessels with twin diesel engines, two bathrooms, and the finest line of marine electronics. This growth is attributed to excellent service provided to our customers along with skilled captains and crew.

Words From The Owner & Head Captain, Olin Marler

I am Clarence Olin Marler of Olin Marler Fishing Fleet and Dolphin/sunset cruises. I started out when I was about 10 years of age and worked on just about every boat in Destin before graduating from high school. My family is now in the fourth generation of fishing: My granddad (Joseph Marler); My dad (Clarence Marler), Myself, and my son (Greg Marler). My dad had plenty of true stories about his experiences (i.e. rowing out into the gulf with only a skiff and catching plenty of snapper and grouper; Finding schools of red snapper so hungry that you could tear a piece off a your shirt and use it for bait. One of his stories and advice was to remember that fish have tails-so don't give up if you don't catch fish in one location because there may be plenty of them there tomorrow.

Back then, the captains were much more demanding then we are today. At that time there wasn't any electronic equipment. Therefore, we had to travel and locate fish by compass and throwing a nine pound sounding lead to get the depth of water to sample the bottom.

We put soap in a indention in the bottom of the lead to find out if the bottom was sand, mud, rock etc... If it was sand or mud, we knew it wasn't worth staying around. If it was rock, we knew good fishing was right close. Also, we did not have wash down pumps thus having to bail water in buckets to wash the boat on the way in from a trip.

the days were long (7:00am to 5:00pm) on the water and continue cleaning once arriving at the dock. I always looked forward to taking home a ten pound grouper so my mother could make fish fingers. there were also a few things I can look back on and be thankful I survived some of them such as:

Fishing on the bow of the boat: I used a large wire tub to put my fish in. Many times they would kick their way out of the tub and back into the water. if I would go back on deck i was told to go and cut more bait. After all we would cut bait during the entire time it took to get to the fishing grounds. All a deck hand made on the trip was the fish he caught. Grouper were 10 cents per pound and red snapper were 25 cents per pound. to be continued...