Double Threat Charters was started in 2011 by an 18-year-old at the University of Miami. Fifteen years later, we are one of the top-rated fishing charter operations in Miami, and the crew has barely changed. Our captains have been with the operation for years, so the guests who fish with us keep seeing the same faces on the dock. We are a tight-knit crew that takes a tournament-style approach to our deep sea, inshore, and night trips out of Coconut Grove.
Featured in Marlin Magazine · InTheBite · Florida Sport Fishing · Sport Fishing Magazine · Coastal Angler Magazine
Meet the crew
The people who'll actually be on the boat with you.
Capt. Nick Gonzalez
Owner & Captain
Nick has fished from the Outer Banks to Hawaii and caught most of what swims in the Atlantic. Under his leadership, Double Threat Charters has been featured in Marlin Magazine, InTheBite, Florida Sportfishing Magazine, Sport Fishing Magazine, and Coastal Angler Magazine, and the operation has run about 300 charters a year for the past decade. In 2018 he was named South Florida's Top Release Captain for Atlantic Sailfish, the youngest captain ever to earn the award, and he won it again in 2019. Nick's role has shifted over the years as he leans more on his crew and embraces balance with family. His biggest accomplishment with the business is building a crew that fishes as hard or harder than he does.
Capt. Kristjan Must
Captain, Mate & Manager
Kristjan grew up in New Jersey, chasing striped bass, bluefish, and just about any cold-water fish he could get his hands on. He always knew there was more out there than cold weather and crappy fishing, so after earning a degree in nuclear engineering, he joined the Navy and spent six years aboard a nuclear submarine, touring through Asia and the Middle East. When he got out, he moved to Miami Beach to finally fish somewhere warm. He started chasing tarpon, snook, and sharks from a kayak, and built a local reputation on light tackle before moving into the charter world full time.
Kris has developed into Nick's right-hand man since he joined Double Threat Charters in 2017. He manages the day-to-day operation, keeps the boat running, and handles everything from rigging and repairs to photography and design. If something needs fixing, building, or figuring out, it lands on Kris, and he makes sure it gets done. He is a great captain and one of the best mates in the industry, sharp-witted and easy to be around, and it never hurts to have a nuclear engineer keeping your boat afloat.
Capt. Ryan Peters
Offshore & Night Trip Captain
Ryan is a Miami native with over 20 years of experience fishing off South Florida, and he has been a captain with us since 2019. He is the only member of our crew you will still catch fishing on his days off. He runs offshore on the Double Threat, and he also has his own 22-foot bay boat that he uses for our nighttime tarpon and snook trips. When he is not on a charter, he is often out bait fishing to keep our live bait program stocked.
Ryan loves sportfishing because it always gives him something new to learn, and he prides himself on having a trick up his sleeve on the slow days. His notable catches include mako sharks to 500 pounds, swordfish to 450 pounds, and goliath grouper to 600 pounds, plus marlin, sailfish, and more. His eyesight makes him a real threat in the tower while sight fishing, and his mellow temperament hides the competitive grit to out-fish any captain off South Florida on a given day.
Capt. John Prahl
Inshore & Backcountry Captain
John co-founded Double Threat Charters with Nick in 2011 and came back years later to run our inshore trips, because there is no one we would rather have doing it. He is a fourth-generation Miami native with over 30 years of experience fishing the backcountry of South Florida, from Biscayne Bay and the Keys to Flamingo, Florida Bay, and Miami's urban canals. The South Florida inshore fishery changes constantly through the year, and John has the experience to put anglers on fish in any season, regardless of the conditions. He is exceptionally patient, kind, and wonderful with kids.
The Full Story
Miami’s tournament-style charter operation, built by a kid who never felt like he got to fish enough.
It started with a crab
I caught my first thing on the water before I was old enough to remember it well. I was three or four, on a sailboat my dad rented, and I pulled up a crab. I thought it was amazing. Something about not knowing what was down there got its hooks in me and never let go.
My parents bought an old Chris Craft when I was in elementary school, and we would run offshore with my dad’s friends once or twice a month when we could. When I was not offshore, I was a dock rat, working the marinas for snapper, shark, and barracuda. Anywhere we traveled, I brought a rod. I studied species books and weather charts and subscribed to every fishing magazine I could get. We went to the Bahamas once a year, and that was the week I looked forward to more than any other. It was never enough, and I always felt like I needed to fish more.
Not built for a nine-to-five
In 2010, I got my first job at West Marine, unloading boxes for eight dollars an hour. It sucked. This is also where I met John, who now runs our inshore trips. We would talk about fishing and bond over how much we both hated being stuck at the store.
Senior year of high school, I rolled some sushi after a day of fishing, brought it to school the next morning, and sold the rolls for four dollars apiece. This escalated into a real side hustle selling 30 to 50 rolls a day, so I hired my friend David to help make the sushi and sell it during the other lunch period. There was one week where David managed the entire process while I skipped school and went fishing. Making money while I was on the water beat throwing boxes around. Eventually I had to shut it down, since we were in violation of employment laws, health codes, and, ultimately, school rules.
Shortly after, I went to the University of Miami on a pre-law track, and I knew pretty quickly I was not cut out for corporate. With the sushi empire behind me, I started running a surf-lesson business on South Beach my freshman year as my new side hustle. I also signed up for my captain’s license and figured I would try starting a charter operation. Even if it did not make much money, at least I would get to fish more.
The new kids on the block
The Miami charter industry was sealed shut when I started, and there were basically three ways in. One, you spent ten or fifteen years as a captain or mate and eventually bought or started your own business. Two, your family already owned a charter operation. Three, you were a wealthy investor treating it as a side project, which almost never stuck. That is how it worked for a long time, and any other approach was against the grain. I tried to get work as a mate on a few boats, but it was too competitive, I did not have the experience, and I let the follow-ups go.
I started the charter business with John Prahl in 2011. John had a 17-foot Boston Whaler for inshore, and I had access to my dad’s old 38-foot Chris Craft, the Blue Yonder, which was not getting much use. I told my dad I would cover the costs of licenses, insurance, and maintenance and pay him per trip if I could use the boat, and since he did not think anything would come of it, he reluctantly agreed. Between the two boats, John and I could run both inshore and deep sea, which is exactly where the Double Threat Charters name came from. We did not have much else going for us at the time, just two boats and a slogan: No Fish Is Safe.
At this point I was 18 and had never worked a day on a charter boat. I was a die-hard recreational angler who fished hard and liked a challenge, and that was my entire résumé. When we launched our first website, every local competitor had twenty-plus years behind them, and they thought we were just some kids who did not know what we were doing. They were right. We had started a high-overhead, low-demand business in a wrecked economy, with four-dollar diesel and a green captain, so by every measure this should have failed.
Building our own way in
I am a problem solver, so I went and manufactured the experience I did not have. I joined the fishing club at UM, got people together to split fuel, and practice-fished a few times a week. During the day we would get offshore and kite-fish, and in the evenings we would chase tarpon and snook. Six months of that turned me into a real mate and gave us a serious library of photos and video, which was finally enough to launch our first website.
John and I ran the business together for the first couple of years, splitting everything down the middle. Around 2013, before things really took off, he stepped away to do his own thing, and I took Double Threat over on my own. From there, I funded the business with surf-lesson money. I bought used gear off Craigslist, and every dollar I made went back into the boat. The rest was a grind. The first developer we hired built the website in Flash, which meant it could not rank on Google, so I saved up and rebuilt it in HTML. We had mechanical problems, website problems, and plenty of reasons to quit, but I kept leaning into it and taught myself marketing and SEO instead. We finally started ranking on Google right before spring of 2014, and we ran over 200 deep-sea trips my senior year. It was the first time I thought this business might actually work. I gave up on the idea of law school and went full time fishing after I wrapped up my bachelor’s degree in 2015.
By then I was running my dad’s boat far too much to keep renting it, so I bought it from him and moved to a commercial slip. We have a running joke that three family members overpaid for the Blue Yonder: my mom bought it first, my dad got it in the divorce, and then I bought it off him. I already knew the Chris Craft had flaws that made it a poor long-term rig, so I was planning a proper build from almost day one.
The dream boat
That build became the Double Threat, a 1972 43-foot Hatteras stripped to the hull and rebuilt over more than a year from 2016 to 2017, mostly with our own hands. It has Cummins 450C power, arguably the best engine in its class, plus a custom livewell and fish box, new electronics, and a full tuna tower on a hull that was overbuilt to last. We have since refurbished the interior, and we have big plans for the boat to wrap up 2026.
How we fish, and why it stuck
Being locked out of the industry turned out to be the best thing that happened to us. We never picked up the salty-captain habits or the entitlement that comes with leaning on a name, and we had to earn a reputation from the first trip rather than coast on one. We have always fished hard, been grateful to anyone that gave us a shot, and understood that without our customers we had nothing.
That is still how we run the business. I built the crew out of friends and people I enjoyed spending time with, and most of them have been here a long time. We have a lot of repeat customers, a low-turnover crew, and a habit of trying to improve everything we do, because effort was the only thing we had to offer when we started. More than 3,000 trips later, that has not changed.
Come fish with us
Browse the site and you will see how we work. Tell us when you want to go and what you want to catch, and we will handle the rest.