Dana Wharf Sportfishing and Whale Watching

Dana Wharf Crews are the best!

Excellent tour, saw whales and dolphins, friendly and knowledgeable staff along with extra guides on board that walk around answering questions, engaging children and sharing knowledge and laughs. It is COLD outside of the harbor, even in good weather, and the potential to get wet can come if the water is choppy, reccommend water proof jackets and hats, especially for kids!! Not a lot of places to sit unless you go downstairs, so be prepared to stand for the entire 2 hours or snag someone elses spot when they go to the bathroom ;0

Whale watching is unpredictable, so don't expect to see the same show as the previous tour group - these whales are on the move - and fast! I was disappointed to only see 1 fin whale, but that's nature! There is great information about whales from the tour guide while waiting for "fin-again" (fin whale) to surface. I learned quite a bit, eventhough there wasn't much to see. We were lucky, however, to ride up on a huge pod of dolphins. It was just like DiCaprio in"Titanic", but much better!

I took my 6 year old nephew on the trip and told him we may not see anything, but thught the boat ride alone would be fun. The crew was engaging for the first hour at which time nothing was sighted. My nephew told me he was haveing a great time. When we did spot a fin whale, my nephew was overjoyed. Heading back to the marina, we saw several dolphns and my nephew informed me that this was the best day of his life!!! I couldn't agree more......

Great day. Saw one whale but was even more excited about the dolphins. :) guide was extremely knowledgeable and crew was friendly.

We go whale watching several times a year and always out of Dana Point. The tours are enjoyable and educational as the crew is very knowledgeable about the local marine life. Every possible effort is made to view a whale but of course, that is not always going to happen so the captain is always on the lookout for dolphins, sea lions, etc. No matter what you see, a day spent on the water is a good day.

We were able to follow a female Gray Whale for quite some time, and she kept fluking every few minutes. We also saw a pod of several hundred common dolphins with babies. This was our first time ever seeing whales and dolphins in the wild, and we were very pleased with the trip and the crew. Thank you!

My husband & I are locals who never took advantage of this wonderful resource right on our own backyard until this past week. We had a wonderful time on the whale watching tour and found our captain to be so interesting and very knowledgeable about the sea life in the area. The boat ride was great and the crew were friendly & helpful. We plan to come back again as soon as possible to see more whales and dolphins!

Excellent trip, Super lively bait, crew were on the spot helpful. Brought a friend from New Jersey we had a blast!!!

The crew was fantastic at helping us get started fishing since we hadn't fished in many years! They were fabulous and helped make this a very fun event! The boat was wonderful and had great food aboard! It was a fabulous experience that we will be sure to do again!

Nice couple of hours led by an enthusiastic crew! We saw one Grey Whale and plenty of Dolphins that played alongside the boat, which was awesome. Well worth the money! The Thompson family (England)

Went out excited with wife and 3 older teenage children on Christmas vac. It rained iin the morn and cleared by noon, nice and sunny. Captain and crew were friendly. Got out on the water and cap warned it's going to be ruff out there a storm just blew through this morn. Got passed the jetty and it got extremely ruff everyone just held on and didn't move around. 25 min in to trip captain said it's too ruff, and would'nt be able to follow a whale if we found one. Said he would radio office about refunds or some kind of credit . He had to wait for perfect nonwave to turn the boat in a hurry. Got back too dock less than 1 hour out, they gave us our tickets back. Some of us were from out of state and went in to talk to the office. They told us thats all they could do. I asked for manager or owner they said she just left, and wouldn't be back today. So the owner left the help to give us the poor service news, not there fault. My money is waisted and I won't be back to that Dana Point Harbor

We had no keepers this time, we caught a few small fish and that's it. The crew were nice. We were hoping to catch more fish and keeper fish. We used live squid bait, but it didn't work for us. I wish they had that and the usual live little fish. I love fishing anyways, but this is too expensive for my pocket. I'd do it again, but only once or twice every year. We saw many pods of dolphins and even a baby one. Being on a boat is nice, but costs too much. We like to go to the San Clemente pier, because we only have to pay for parking and bait. For this activity we have to pay for the ticket, a day license, pole rentals(since ours are not the best), not to mention the optional jackpot, tips, and fish cleaning by the crew. We love it, but it's better just to go to the pier or do what some crazy people do, which is fishing on a kayak, which then it would be cheaper to buy a year fishing license. Try the boat thing, maybe you'll be more lucky than us and catch the big ones!

It was an amazing time! We were on vacation and decided at the last moment to go out whale watching, the sea was calm and the temps no too cold so we booked the noon trip. Boat was clean and well stocked with snacks and refreshments at quite reasonable prices. The crew friendly and knowledgeable. We saw hundreds of dolphins and got up and close to sea lions as well. Unfortunately, we didn't see any greys during the trip, but the captain had received info that there were some headed towards us from up north, but our time had run out. He didn't have to do this, but he told everyone on board that if we had the time he would take us back out, for free, on the 2pm trip and we'd try to get to the group of whales headed our direction. We did get a glimpse of the amazing animals, but were't able to get very close as it was a mother and her calf. She did everything possible to keep us at a good distance from her baby, but was fun and interesting just the same. The captain manuvered the boat to entice the dolphins to play with us and what a show we got! Many of them chased the boat and would leap 15 feet or so out of the water jumping our wake. I would recommend this to everyone!!

It was fun,good service, would suggest adding sunrise and sunset watching in the future