Picking the right fishing guide for a kids' trip is its own skill, and Captain Scott Brown laid out exactly how to do it. Scott is a Florida Keys guide who specializes in family-friendly charters and runs Hooked on Family, and his core point is counterintuitive: the most famous tarpon or permit guide in an area might be the worst choice for your family. The right guide knows how to keep a four-year-old engaged in ninety-degree heat, has age-appropriate tackle, and understands that kids care more about weird, colorful fish than glamour species.
Watch the full conversation on YouTube or listen to the episode now.
Ask how old the kids are, what their angling experience is, how long their attention span lasts in the heat, and what your expectations are for the day. Scott recommends checking the guide's Instagram to see how many kids they have actually taken out, verifying the boat can handle your family size comfortably, and confirming they have age-appropriate tackle like lighter six-foot rods.
Captain Scott Brown guides kids as young as four years old on saltwater trips in the Florida Keys. Success depends on age-appropriate tackle like a lighter six-foot rod, targeting species that provide constant action such as snappers and ladyfish, and managing expectations around attention spans in the heat.
The best fish for kids are species that bite constantly and look interesting: snappers, ladyfish, sea trout, small jacks, yellowtail snapper, barracuda, and even small lemon sharks in the mangroves. Scott explains that kids prefer colorful, weird-looking fish that do interesting things, like a puffer that inflates itself, over glamour species like bonefish or permit that involve long waits between bites.
Captain Scott Brown recommends a six-foot medium to medium-light rod from the St. Croix premier series paired with a 2500 to 3000 series reel. The setup is light enough for kids whose wrists are not fully developed, short enough to manage easily, and still capable of landing everything from snappers to bonefish.
Check the guide's Instagram to see how many kids actually appear in their feed, verify the boat can handle your family size, ask about their experience with specific age groups, and confirm they carry age-appropriate tackle. Scott stresses that the most famous guides in an area often are not the best choice for family trips, so look for guides who specialize in family-friendly charters.
Trip length depends on the child's attention span and tolerance for heat. Scott tells parents to communicate honestly with the guide about how long their kids last in ninety-degree weather, ensure there are enough snacks and water, and prioritize constant action over duration, since kids with heavy tackle may only last about ten casts before their wrists give out.
This is a conversation every parent who wants to take their kids fishing needs to hear. I wanted Scott on because he is honest about the fact that not every guide is right for family trips, even if they are famous for catching big fish. He has two young kids himself, he guides families for a living, and he has mastered something incredibly valuable, which is keeping kids excited about being on the water. The specific tackle and target-species advice is exactly the kind of field-tested information I wanted him to share.
Scott addresses a counterintuitive reality head-on: the most famous tarpon or permit guide in an area might be the worst choice for your family trip. The unsung heroes who dedicate their careers to family fishing do not get magazine features or huge Instagram followings, but they have mastered keeping a four-year-old engaged in ninety-degree heat while managing parental expectations. He explains how to do reconnaissance on a guide's Instagram and what questions reveal whether they truly understand kids. Hear his full vetting breakdown in the episode.
Scott told a story about taking an eight-year-old and his dad out with one goal: the kid's first tarpon. He used a circle hook for easy mechanics and live bait, and the kid landed a 30-pound tarpon while both father and son lost their minds. Then came the line that reveals everything about young anglers: the kid immediately asked where the sharks were. They finished with ladyfish, trout, and redfish as icing on the cake. Listen to how he managed expectations around that first fish.
Watch the full episode or listen now to hear the rest.
Hand a four-year-old a heavy tarpon rod and they will last maybe ten casts before their wrists are smoked. Scott breaks down the biomechanics most people miss and recommends a six-foot medium to medium-light St. Croix premier series rod with a 2500 to 3000 series reel: light, short, forgiving, and still capable of landing bonefish to snappers. He also explains why hands-free tools like trolling motors and Power-Poles matter so much with kids. Hear the complete tackle breakdown.
Ask a kid whether they want a bonefish or a shark and the answer tells you everything. Scott's own four-year-old has caught several bonefish and does not care, but he wants the puffer that inflates, the toothy barracuda, the colorful grass porgy, and the bright yellowtail. Instead of pushing glamour species with long waits between bites, Scott targets fish that bend the rod on every cast, like pinfish, snappers, jacks, ladyfish, and little lemon sharks. Hear why weird-looking fish win for kids.
The day after this one, what stayed with me was Scott's honesty that not every guide is right for family trips, even the ones famous for big fish. The guides who dedicate themselves to family fishing have mastered something incredibly valuable, which is keeping kids excited about being on the water.
The specific tackle recommendations, the target-species selection, and the questions to ask before booking are exactly the kind of practical, field-tested information that will make your next family trip a success. Follow Scott at Hooked on Family and listen to the whole thing.
Listen to the entire conversation here.
The Tom Rowland Podcast brings you long-form conversations with the most accomplished anglers, hunters, conservationists, and outdoor professionals in the game. Listen to every full-length Tom Rowland Podcast interview.
Captain Scott Brown is a fishing guide based in the Florida Keys who specializes in family-friendly fishing charters. He runs Hooked on Family, a platform dedicated to helping parents create memorable fishing experiences with their children. With two young kids of his own, Scott brings both professional guiding expertise and hands-on parenting experience to every family trip, from managing expectations to selecting age-appropriate tackle and target species that keep kids engaged. You can follow him on Instagram at @hookedonfamily or visit hookedonfamily.com.
Full transcript of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Episode 332 with Capt. Scott Brown.
Capt. Scott Brown: So when people ask me, they're like, "Hey, man, how are you doing it? What's the secret?" Because we have quite a few people asking us. And I'm like, hey, number one, not every kid is the same. You gotta figure it out on your own, buddy. Just because my three-year-old's doing it does not necessarily mean the way that I brought him up into doing this is gonna be the same for your kid. But I will say this, and I'm sure you know this: you're a product of your environment. So if the only thing that Lindsey and I do in our free time is hunt and fish, what do you think our kids are gonna be doing? We never press it upon them.
Lindsey Brown: I think another factor of that is that we don't have family close. So it's not like we can call nana and papa and be like, "Hey, can you watch the kids? We're gonna go do this." They have no choice but to come with us. We've never, like, had a babysitter or anything like that.
Capt. Scott Brown: We've had a babysitter twice in our lifetime.
Lindsey Brown: Yeah. So it's like, if we wanna go fishing, the kids are coming with us.
Capt. Scott Brown: This is Captain Scott Brown.
Lindsey Brown: And Lindsey Brown from Hooked on Family.
Capt. Scott Brown: This is the Tom Rowland Podcast.
Tom Rowland: Hey, everybody. Welcome to the podcast today. We got a really fun one for you today. I came across a video of a little kid casting, and he was casting underneath the mangroves. He catches a snapper, and he's standing on a skiff. And the whole thing just reminded me so much of how I raised my children in the Florida Keys. They were just fishing off the dock all the time, taking them out on the boat. They became incredibly good fishermen at a really, really young age. And now I'm watching this on YouTube with another family doing something very similar.
Tom Rowland: Captain Scott Brown is a really interesting guy. I've enjoyed talking to him. I've been emailing back and forth with him for a little while. And, you know, I wanted to get him and his wife on the podcast, and it just so happened that this time we had he, his wife, and his kids. They all were on the podcast, so it's kind of a fun one. We talk about growing up in the Keys and growing up fishing and keeping your kids in an active lifestyle outdoors and what that means and how you do it.
Tom Rowland: And I just love this podcast. It was really fun with my friend, Captain Scott Brown. And you can find more of Captain Scott Brown by going to hookedonfamily.com. That's the hub of all his operations. He's got editorial and content on everything about fishing with kids outdoors. It's a really good resource. Hooked on Family is his Instagram and he and his wife's Instagram handle. And you can also go to the website pushitgoodinshore.com. That's his charter business. If you would like to contact him, maybe actually go fishing with him, he has an Instagram handle for his charter service as well, at Push It Good Inshore. That's on Instagram. The YouTube channel's Hooked on Family, and you can find all kinds of great stuff there. So stand by for this great conversation with Scott and his family. Alright, coming at you right now.
Tom Rowland: And we're live. How are you guys doing today?
Capt. Scott Brown: Pretty good.
Tom Rowland: I'm glad we finally made it happen. Scott Brown and Lindsey down here in the Florida Keys, Hooked on Family. What's Hooked on Family all about?
Capt. Scott Brown: You wanna take that, or you want me to take it?
Lindsey Brown: You can take it.
Capt. Scott Brown: So Hooked on Family was a concept that kinda came about way later on, after we moved to the Keys. We moved to the Florida Keys in January.
Lindsey Brown: Of this year?
Capt. Scott Brown: Yeah, this year. We're almost to 2020, I guess. Time flies for me. But yeah, we originally moved from Destin, Florida, and that's where we had Graydon, our first kid. And we were heavily into inshore fishing when we first moved to Destin. So Destin's renowned for its red fishery and speckled trout and all that. But we kinda got out of that. We sold our first Maverick and we got a big center console, and we kinda transitioned to their offshore fishery, because that's equally as renowned over there for their tuna, marlin, and mahi. You have the oil rigs very close by.
Tom Rowland: So what kind of boat did you get into then?
Capt. Scott Brown: We had a 27-foot Ocean Wave with twin 150 Hondas, and we used that for quite a long time. I was super big into freediving and spearfishing. And that's a really good place to spearfish over there. It's murky and it's deep, but if you have the diving ability, you can shoot some big fish.
Lindsey Brown: It's not always murky.
Capt. Scott Brown: No, it isn't always murky. Sometimes you get some good days.
Tom Rowland: So the diving ability — that is your real job, right? Right now?
Capt. Scott Brown: Kind of. Yeah. My real job is over at the special operations dive school in Key West, Florida. I am actually active duty military. Most people have no idea. I like to keep that to myself. I don't really like to promote that side. I like to remain a quiet professional. But that's mostly just closed circuit and open circuit diving. I was introduced to freediving as a kid by my dad. We used to come down as a family to Islamorada every year for an entire month since I was eight years old. That's where I got into freediving. And then, once we got to Destin, that's the last place that I thought we'd be freediving. And then we ran into a guy, another family who owned a freediving shop over there, Mike Poole.
Lindsey Brown: Poole. Poole.
Capt. Scott Brown: Poole — I always get his name wrong. Mike and Beth Poole. And they're like, "Oh yeah, we were freedive spearfishermen over here." And I was like, "Really? In Destin?" And they're like, "Yeah, it's an awesome spear fishery." And that's where we continued it. It was down there.
Tom Rowland: And then — what were the targets?
Capt. Scott Brown: So you have, obviously, the big red snapper over there. You have a wahoo fishery in the fall. You have gag grouper. You got quite a few things. I mean, recently, yellowfin tuna have been shot over there. It's crazy.
Tom Rowland: So how deep are you diving in that area?
Capt. Scott Brown: If you wanna shoot really good, solid fish, you're diving to 70 to 80 feet. And it's all structure oriented. There is live bottom over there, but it's few and far between. It's not like down here in the Keys.
Tom Rowland: Right. So you're doing that on one breath?
Capt. Scott Brown: You're taking one breath.
Tom Rowland: So why is it that you're attracted to that when you're obviously very good at scuba? You could go down there. Is it because you can get closer to the fish? Or it's more challenging, or what?
Capt. Scott Brown: Well, I love the challenge, absolutely. I'm all about the hunt. But I think you can shoot way more fish in those deeper depths on a single breath than having to do a repetitive dive on open circuit. Plus, it's more of just a personal thing.
Tom Rowland: Is there, like, a community of spearfishermen — like, hunters, where freediving is like bow hunting, and using tanks and gear is like rifle hunting?
Capt. Scott Brown: Yeah, I would say there's a culture in it. A very strong culture. It's getting more and more popular. As you've seen, out of the hunting industry, bow hunting is on the incline. You know, just as fly fishing's on the incline in regular fishing. There's a strong community over in the Panhandle region of freedivers. But then all of a sudden, we had our first kid.
Capt. Scott Brown: And Lindsey and I, we kinda just roll with the punches. We don't plan anything. Not real big planners. We're not huge planners at all. And we always wanted kids, and so we had Graydon, our first kid. And I said to myself, "You know what? We're not gonna be free diving with Graydon." So we got rid of the center console — and there's some other stuff that went into that too, as far as my job goes. And we went back to the Maverick HPX-V flats boat. So it went right back to the flats fishery.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. And that was, like, how I got into the bay boat. Well, we started with a bay boat when we were doing these redfish tournaments. But nobody really had bay boats down here. And so when we brought the bay boat down, my kids were about the same age as yours. And then I started realizing, "Wow, I can do a lot of things with the bay boat." And I could do a lot of things with the skiff too, but the higher sides made everybody happier. Like, you've got Chandler right there crawling around, and it's possible that she could crawl over the side of the Maverick.
Lindsey Brown: Yeah, she'll definitely get to a point where she'll be able to. Right now, she's still just starting to pull up on things.
Tom Rowland: Months away. And then we went to — I got this bay boat, and it had higher sides. And man, that really was great for my kids. And then it opened up a whole new world of fishing for me. I'd been blowing past these mangrove shorelines and blowing past all this stuff and not paying any attention to it whatsoever. And then, because of the kids, started going over there trying to catch little snappers. "Oh, there's other stuff here too. Oh, this is really cool." And you just end up learning a ton more.
Capt. Scott Brown: Oh, absolutely. It's ironic, like, talking to you about it and funny at the same time — just the learning curve on that when you have kids, and the different approach on how you would fish. You have to take a totally different approach than what you normally would.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. Tell me about how that is, because I wonder if it's similar to the different approach that I had to take.
Capt. Scott Brown: I mean, obviously you know way better than me. Just, species depend on what you wanna target. Graydon, he caught his first bonefish a couple of months ago. And I targeted a specific group of bonefish that I knew were susceptible to being caught by him. Ones that were not pressured, ones that you could get within 20 feet of with the boat. They had no idea what the boat was. And he's able to launch a cast about 20 feet, and he was successful in doing that.
Tom Rowland: So how old is he?
Capt. Scott Brown: He's three, going on four.
Tom Rowland: Three years old, he sight casts a bonefish?
Capt. Scott Brown: By himself, casted. I knew there were fish there.
Tom Rowland: "Throw it over there." And he makes the cast.
Capt. Scott Brown: Yeah. It was a knocker rig with a piece of dead shrimp. I knew that this bonefish would smell it as long as it got within — I wouldn't say within a foot, but as long as it was up current of this.
Tom Rowland: It's really funny, though. People will tell you that time flies. And I remember people telling me this. It's like, "Oh, they're young, man. You won't believe it. You'll blink your eyes and they'll be out of college." And all these old people kept telling me this, and I was like, "You know, old people just must have a different sense of time or whatever. Not me. I'm gonna relish every little bit of this." But I look at your kids that are really similar in age to where mine were. And now both boys are in Montana. We have a 22-year-old and a 20-year-old and a 16-year-old. And literally, like, we're gonna go to Chico's right after this. And we probably went to Chico's four times a week with my kids. And I can remember this whole scene so well. And when people tell you that you will blink your eyes — I mean, I don't wanna be the other old person that's telling you this, but it goes by so fast. It's just amazing.
Lindsey Brown: It does. I mean, even just — I can't believe that we've almost been here for a year, because we moved here when Chandler was two weeks old. So it's crazy.
Capt. Scott Brown: A military family's timeline goes very fast, one thing to another. Luckily, because of being in special operations, you're kinda solidified in one place. You're not moving around everywhere. But when you're gone for the majority of that time, you blink your eyes and it's all gone very quickly.
Tom Rowland: So is that one of the reasons why you're so focused on spending so much time with your kids?
Capt. Scott Brown: Absolutely. I know what it's like for them, or for me, not to be there, and I know the second and third order effects of me not being there. And so, knowing that and kinda looking at everybody else and knowing the same things — I have similar friends in similar situations who also take notice. I'm like, "Man, where did time go? My kid's 16 years old now." I miss birthdays, I miss Christmases. And any chance I get, I'll spend with them. I'll turn down schools, I'll turn down a lot of stuff just so I can get time with them, because you can't repay time.
Tom Rowland: No, you can't. And it goes by so fast. And you think — I mean, there's always this fine line. When my kids were that age, I was working, you know, three hundred days a year. And so there's this fine line of you're trying to provide for your family, but at the same time, you're also trying to make sure that you're spending enough time with everybody. And then you kinda get out of balance. Your wife as well. It's equally as important and much easier to forget. The kids are literally hanging on you, and your wife is like, "I'm over here." I see the kids really need you right now — that's obvious. But you can't neglect any part of the whole deal.
Capt. Scott Brown: Absolutely, man. There's a balance. As you know, there's a balance in everything. And the balance, I think, is the main goal we're always looking for. Time with family, time on the water, time at the job. Everyone understands the balance. It's the journey and getting there and figuring it out that is the hard part.
Tom Rowland: The really funny part about the balance is that in order to really excel at anything, you have to be wildly out of balance for some distinct period of time. Like Malcolm Gladwell calls it the ten thousand hours. You can call it whatever you want, but there has to be a time when things are so far out of balance that you are neglecting everything else. But a successful relationship — like Lindsey shaking her head, yes — a successful relationship seems to be that everybody's kind of on the same page. "Okay, you need to work right now." Everybody kind of understands that. But then you also understand, but not too much. And then when it's time off, then we gotta spend time with the family.
Tom Rowland: He's like a YouTube star. There was one video where you're kinda cruising down the mangroves, and you just toss it right up under the bushes and get a snapper, I think. It's pretty impressive. A mangrove snapper?
Lindsey Brown: Yeah, you did. That was one last weekend.
Capt. Scott Brown: That's kind of the catalyst for Hooked on Family. There's three things that kinda were the catalyst for Hooked on Family. The first one was — I kind of had a major failure in my military career, in the sense of what I wanted to do. I interviewed for this organization a couple of times, and I just didn't have the personality for it. Which kinda led me to throwing in the Key West towel, like, "Hey, if I can't do that, give me some time with my family, and I wanna be an instructor down in Key West." So instructor time is time with family, is what I equate that to. I'm still working in the same capacity, I'm just not operational. I just have more time with the family.
Tom Rowland: That's a choice, though.
Capt. Scott Brown: That's a choice. Absolutely. A choice that I wanted very badly. And obviously, chose Key West strategically.
Tom Rowland: Well, I remember we were in touch over email.
Capt. Scott Brown: A long time ago. Yeah. Absolutely. It feels like yesterday, but yeah, I wanted to get your opinion on that. And just coming down here as a kid throughout my entire life, I knew this is where I wanted to end up to begin with. But so there was that. And then, that last part was that viral video that we had of Graydon pitching like he was in the Bassmaster circuit. People are just like, "Yo, your kid flips better than my friends do, and they're full grown men." I'm like, "Dude, I don't know where he got it from. We didn't teach him that." Right?
Lindsey Brown: Yeah. I mean, we didn't teach him anything. I remember just one day on the boat, I showed him just, like, how to open the bail and how the line comes out. And then he figured out his own way to make it happen. It's pretty crazy.
Capt. Scott Brown: He's a super small kid for three years old. He's, like, thirty-two pounds, and we just did a video on how he casts. I kinda emphasized: just let your kid figure it out. There's a proper way, obviously, to cast, but —
Tom Rowland: But a lot of times, the kids figure out a way that works for them with a rod. If you try to teach them how you would cast the rod — well, it's a seven-foot rod and you're six-two, right? So if you give him a rod that's his size, his height, maybe he can do it the way you're teaching him. But what I found with my kids was that they came up with their own little way. They stuck with it for a while, but after a while, they become really good the way that they are doing it. It's not wrong. It's just the way. For reference: if I gave you a 12-foot, a 15-foot rod, how would you cast it? It would probably be different than your talent.
Capt. Scott Brown: Probably take a couple of steps into that. Right.
Tom Rowland: That was one of the things that Kenny Harris always told me about the kids. He was like, "You know what, you should get, like, an older rod, and you should cut it down and then cut the corks down and get it to where it fits him like a rod fits you." And then I had some special rods made, and some ones that I'd get from the sponsors — even as little as ice fishing rods and stuff like that that we could catch snappers with. But all of a sudden, the kids have rods that fit them. You're using a tiny little reel, a tiny little rod, and we would use all of those little push-button Zebcos or whatever. And they got really good at it, because I didn't really understand at first that if you push the button all the way in, the line doesn't go out. But when you let it go, and then you push the button again, the line will stop. And when you figure that out, you can be really accurate with those things. So we would play that game in the backyard, and we would pitch to things and try to cast at things. But saltwater — they don't last more than a day or so with the saltwater.
Capt. Scott Brown: I think there's quite a few rods and reels in Davy Jones' locker from Graydon.
Lindsey Brown: Yeah. Graydon's gotten a bunch of those little kids' rods, and we have none of them anymore. I think we've gone through, like, four.
Tom Rowland: Yeah, absolutely. You gotta have something that's good enough.
Capt. Scott Brown: We transitioned to the freshwater trout rods — you know those little yellow Eagle Claw rods, I think is what they were. We transitioned to that because you can find, like, a six-foot rod in that, and it's super light. I think it's like an ultralight rod. And he started catching little speckled trout with that thing, and then that transitioned into bigger rods. And then, honestly, he can cast — what is this? It's one of G. Loomis's inshore, one of their green water rods, I think. It's a green blank, but it's super lightweight. And he can propel that thing because of the action, the tip. The action in the tip of the rod. And we tried super short rods, but a lot of them are heavy for them. Kids have weak wrists. They're not strong enough to be able to use that. So what he'll do is he'll tuck it up underneath his arm, hold the line and the bail with his left hand, and he'll use his body weight to cast it. And again, he came up with this idea and this technique, and we just rode with it. We're like, "You know what? If that works for you, that works for you. I'm not gonna sit here and tell you it's wrong."
Tom Rowland: Did you ever listen to that one podcast I did about the ring game?
Capt. Scott Brown: Yeah, absolutely. The ring game.
Tom Rowland: That is the best, man. And looking at him, about how old he is — that's about the age that I started playing that game with my son. He was good, like him. He could do the cast. And come to think of it, that's how he would cast too. It was under his arm, and he would open the bail, and he would turn his hips and, like, throw the cast out there. But we lived on a canal, and I would throw out there. The jig would land, and it would make a ring. And then he would try to land his in that ring. And then later, it was that he would make a ring, and I would try to throw it in there. But man, hours of free entertainment.
Capt. Scott Brown: That's awesome.
Tom Rowland: Hula hoops. Well, hula hoops or —
Capt. Scott Brown: You know, you can lay a big rope down.
Tom Rowland: Yep. Go anywhere, but it's super fun.
Tom Rowland: So how's the Hooked on Family thing going, on YouTube?
Capt. Scott Brown: You know, we kinda push it. We really don't. But it started off as kind of home videos for us, honestly. I didn't know anything about editing. I didn't know anything about cinematography. And one day, I was like — I'm notorious for picking up stuff and just going 110% with it and figuring it out.
Tom Rowland: Honey, it doesn't seem like somebody in your profession would do things like that.
Capt. Scott Brown: I looked at Lindsey, and I was like, "You know what? I'm going to go 110% into cinematography, research this. We're gonna drop a bunch of money into a computer. We already have the camera. We have the fishing experience. Let's just do it." And so we went all in. And now we have this YouTube channel that we keep up with — I'd say 90% we keep up with.
Lindsey Brown: Yeah, I mean, we've had a couple of things that have come up that we've had to take some breaks for.
Capt. Scott Brown: A lot of people hit me up. They're just like, "Yo, man, you need to do more. You need to do more." And I don't tell people what I do. I'm like, "Yo, you don't even understand."
Tom Rowland: Well, that's the thing about the digital age. Anything that people like at all — like this podcast, for instance, or YouTube channels or whatever — the appetite is insatiable. People want more and more and more, and you can't turn it out fast enough. So the real recipe there, I think, is to find something that you can do fairly quickly. And it doesn't have to be super incredibly high quality right now, but it's more about regularity. Every single week is probably better than a really good one once every couple of weeks.
Capt. Scott Brown: Consistency is key. Absolutely. I agree with that. That's everything in life, consistency. So we kinda played around with these how-to videos. We've done two how-to videos. And I try to keep the same quality that I can, just keeping it shorter and giving more information. But I don't like giving people the answers, because I feel like you learn a lot more figuring it out yourself.
Tom Rowland: So what would be a subject that you've done so far?
Capt. Scott Brown: So we did "how to launch a boat with kids," because that's actually a task if you've ever done it by yourself.
Tom Rowland: Lock them in the car, and then, like, let's go do it.
Capt. Scott Brown: I'll put Graydon, because Graydon actually knows how to swim pretty well for his age, even without a life jacket. The kid can survive if he fell in the water.
Capt. Scott Brown: I keep a life jacket on him whenever we're underway, obviously, because that's law. And I keep a life jacket on him when the water is turbid or the clarity is not good — you can't see what depth you're in. And I keep a life jacket on him when the current is ripping. But other than that, I don't ever keep a life jacket on before pulling five inches of water, and I take a lot of heat for that.
Tom Rowland: Well, we take a lot of heat for that too. We did a TV show like that, and we're in a bay boat. The sides are high. It was the same thing — we were completely within the law, but somebody saw a kid without a life jacket on a boat. And it is just a hot button. But for me, it's like, okay, certainly you would never wanna endanger your child, but no one knows his ability to swim better than you do. You obviously are professional around the water. There's a lot of things going on here that people probably don't realize. Secondly, it is five inches deep. And there's never going to be a time when he's more than arm's length from you. Could he fall in? Yes, absolutely. Would you be in immediately after — probably even before the life jacket could lift him up out of the water? You would be. I've been in that same situation lots of times. But then there's this weird little balance of: it's August, it's super hot. Do you like to wear a life jacket? We're trying to get a child to really enjoy this. Wear a wetsuit in 95-degree heat with the sun as strong as it is in the Florida Keys — I don't really think you're having a good time.
Capt. Scott Brown: Absolutely not. I'm not having a good time.
Tom Rowland: Nobody is. So you wanna take the life jacket off. But like you're saying, you're not just taking it off anytime. You're taking it off when the water's clear, it's really shallow, everything is under your control.
Capt. Scott Brown: Absolutely.
Tom Rowland: So Chandler's how old?
Lindsey Brown: She's ten months.
Tom Rowland: And Graydon's what?
Lindsey Brown: Three and a half. He'll be four in April.
Tom Rowland: That's about what you expect.
Lindsey Brown: They're just getting to the point where they can kinda get along.
Tom Rowland: Oh, they'll be best friends.
Lindsey Brown: Kind of. Like, to steal their toys.
Capt. Scott Brown: She's gonna be pushing him around. She's gonna be bigger than him.
Lindsey Brown: She's already bigger than he was.
Capt. Scott Brown: She'll be running the show, for sure.
Tom Rowland: So what kind of heat did you get on the life jacket?
Capt. Scott Brown: So I wanna say the first people that took that video was Maverick Boat Company, and we didn't take any heat from them. Just people that have no idea. They don't understand the environment of the Florida Keys. They don't know that it's super shallow.
Lindsey Brown: And on the flip side of getting a lot of heat from it, there's also a huge group of people who would come to the rescue. Be like, "He's a Keys kid. He probably knew how to swim before he could walk," and this and that. So yeah, there's always some good with the bad.
Capt. Scott Brown: A lot of people came and were like, "Hey, man, you obviously don't understand." I just love the comment, like, "What, he's gonna fall off the boat and water's gonna come rushing up to his kneecaps?" But no, I give it to people too. I love cyber warriors. I love them. They have a lot of courage online. I think it's entertaining. I'm a big fan of constructive criticism — criticize me all you want, but don't misconstrue actual law from your opinion. Every time that we don't have a life jacket on, we're anchored with a power pole. That's law — you have to be anchored. So when you're sitting there telling and influencing others, like, "Hey, that's not the law" — that's an outright lie, and I'm gonna correct you on the spot, because you're taking away from everyone else's ability to enjoy the water. I mean, if you didn't know better and someone's like, "Hey, your kid's gotta wear a life jacket twenty-four-seven," and you don't bother to research it, your kid's gonna be wearing a life jacket twenty-four-seven because you read it on the internet.
Capt. Scott Brown: And that's a whole other subject. There's so many subjects we could get into with this. We've learned so much jumping into the social media world. This whole world is totally new to me. I despised social media for a long time because of what it did to the culture of the United States and to my actual job in itself. I didn't really like it, but I see a lot of good in it now because we're so heavily involved in it. I'm sure you've noticed the same thing over time.
Tom Rowland: Well, it's interesting. I don't know what I think about it, honestly. Just when I start to put my arms around it, I don't like it again. And then just when I don't like it the most, I realize that there's so much good about it. And I think it's this changing relationship that we probably all have with social media eventually. And I even noticed my kids, my boys, which is pretty refreshing and pretty awesome. Like, my son Hayden — he had this opportunity to take a job running a social media account. He chose not to, because he's like, "Dad, I don't want my phone with me all the time."
Capt. Scott Brown: Consumes your life.
Tom Rowland: And in fact, "I'm gonna take Instagram off my phone, and I'm gonna take Snapchat off my phone. I might put it back on there, but I'm not gonna delete my accounts. I'm just gonna take it off my phone." And it's like, I almost think that that's kind of what we're gonna see. Just like when you have people that get really into whatever, and then you have a subculture of people that wanna get off the grid, and they want to live frontier style, and they wanna eat only stuff that they grow. So the more you go this way, there's a culture that goes that way. And I really do believe that some kids are going to push away from social media. And it's gonna be few and far between comparatively to the ones that are getting on or staying on social media. But I just thought it was pretty refreshing for my son to be like, "I don't want my phone all the time."
Capt. Scott Brown: Oh, yeah. You just opened up a can of worms, buddy. We've definitely done the same thing. I went cold turkey from Instagram for an entire year.
Tom Rowland: With social media before Hooked on Family?
Lindsey Brown: I mean, really, I just posted on my personal account — because I do the Hooked on Family Instagram account. But on my personal account, I would just post pictures of kids for family to see, because in Destin, we don't have any family there at all. I had family in Alabama, but we didn't have anybody that was immediately close to us. So that was the main tool that I used it for.
Capt. Scott Brown: We kinda came up in the Facebook era. I was a senior in high school when Facebook hit the scene. And so you had to have a college email to be able to get on it. And so we were able to get on it then. And, obviously, that evolved over time. And then I was probably four years into the military when Instagram came about, and I had nothing to post on there, because — why would I ever post anything about what I do on Instagram? But I started posting spearfishing stuff a lot, and then, obviously, all the fish we caught. But it was kinda like showing all of our other friends across the United States: "Hey, we're down here."
Tom Rowland: So why did you end up taking a year off?
Capt. Scott Brown: Honestly, because I saw myself getting wrapped up into it. And I was like, "This is out of control. What is this? What are you doing right now?" And so I went a solid year of not posting anything. Nothing. And the other part of that is I was in other places in the world where I didn't have any internet access or anything like that. But yeah, it definitely felt good. So I proved it to myself, and then I understood that balance that we were talking about earlier, where you needed to be. And then I criticized people after the fact. But looking back, I think it was kinda foolish of me to criticize, when those people were using social media for the good side that we're about to talk about — as far as meeting people and promoting your business, which is super important in 2019.
Tom Rowland: So now, what kind of transition have you made to kind of understanding that, but then wrapping your arms around social media again to the point of, "I kinda need this"?
Capt. Scott Brown: Oh, absolutely. So we use it to meet people. I use that — so I was just talking to a couple of people. Nick Labadie was one of the guys that we were talking to. It's funny, I just saw that you had Brandon in here also. Nick and Brandon and their families were hanging out with us the other night. We had a big conversation on that. Nick was able to relate in the sense of finding friends whenever he moved down to Key West. I'm in the same boat. It's so hard to have friends when you're in the military, outside of the military — because, one, everyone that's your friend in the military is somewhere else in the United States. And they're usually deployed, so how are you gonna keep up with them? Two, the friends that you do have there, you can't really keep up with them, because they never know if you're there or not. I was gone, I'd probably say a solid three years, the time that we lived in Destin. And so I'd come back to what? My family, obviously, and that's great. But all of a sudden, you wanna hang out with everybody, and no one even knows that you exist anymore.
Capt. Scott Brown: So I kind of use social media and fishing to, one, find friends — people that see eye to eye with me — and two, to kind of be assimilated with the culture in the outdoors world, because that's something that I've been missing out on for over a decade now. I used to be heavily into it growing up and in college, and all of a sudden it's kinda taken away from you. So now I'm back in. And what's the quickest way to find people that see eye to eye? Social media now. Obviously, you're gonna have to sift through the BS and the people, but you eventually find genuine people.
Tom Rowland: It's funny that you would eventually find genuine people on social media, which seems to be one of the least genuine things on the planet.
Capt. Scott Brown: The majority of my job is navigating human terrain.
Tom Rowland: Yeah.
Capt. Scott Brown: I don't wanna get into what I actually do, but human terrain plays a huge part in what I do.
Tom Rowland: So when you say human terrain, you're talking about understanding personalities?
Capt. Scott Brown: Networking, mindset, all that stuff. So I've met quite a few personalities in my decade across the world. But I know when someone's genuine, and I know when someone sees eye to eye.
Tom Rowland: So navigating human terrain — that's a pretty interesting way to describe that.
Capt. Scott Brown: It's just a term for understanding personalities. Knowing your environment, being aware of who's around you and what they're all about. You can see the same thing online. You could tell everything about a person, kind of, when you look at their Instagram, indirectly.
Tom Rowland: Do you really think that? Because I would think that you can tell everything about the way a person wants their life to look.
Capt. Scott Brown: I totally agree with that.
Tom Rowland: But for you, you're looking at it even deeper, going, "Okay, I see who this person wants to be." And how does that tell you who they actually are?
Capt. Scott Brown: I don't wanna say that I target people or anything like that, but — because that's what I do — I know when someone is truly genuine, and all I have to do is just have, like, a ten-minute-long conversation. I don't judge a book by its cover — that's very ignorant of me to do — but you can get a lot from a person on a quick conversation.
Tom Rowland: So has it been pretty easy for you to meet friends and other people that have families? And, Lindsey, have you found —
Capt. Scott Brown: It takes work, though.
Lindsey Brown: Yeah. It's definitely hard, coming from being in one place and having your set of friends, and then trying to — especially here, because I feel like everybody already has their set groups. So you have to kinda try to work your way into them.
Tom Rowland: But with the kids, don't you think that the kids kinda help you in there?
Lindsey Brown: I think the hardest part about that is just that we're up in Sugarloaf, so we're kind of just far enough from everything that it's hard to get him into things, to meet other moms.
Tom Rowland: Well, we found that probably with our first child in the Keys — I don't know that my wife had a lot of friends until we started having babies, and then the friend group started coming. And with the first one, there were some friend groups. But then on the second one, for whatever reason, a lot of other people had babies about that same time, and that one was the one that she really met a lot of people. That's when it really started changing for her and having a bunch more friends. And for whatever reason, it was just like the neighborhood all of a sudden had a baby about the same age. And then those became some of her best friends. And then again later, now we're one of the people that has your group around, and then you'd bring another baby into it, and you bring some other people into the groups. But Key West is an interesting area, because having a family is not exactly the par of the course. It's almost like a rarity in some cases. But there's a lot of people that raise families down there.
Capt. Scott Brown: Our age group with kids is a rarity nowadays also.
Tom Rowland: Which is — what is your age group?
Capt. Scott Brown: Thirty.
Lindsey Brown: I'll be 28.
Tom Rowland: We were 28 when we had our first baby.
Capt. Scott Brown: See, I feel like that was typical of your day, but nowadays —
Tom Rowland: Of my day. Absolutely. Oh, ouch. Wow. You know, I feel you.
Capt. Scott Brown: You have tough skin by now.
Tom Rowland: Yeah, I have tough skin, but it's really old, apparently. It's kinda like armor.
Capt. Scott Brown: All wrinkly and old. No, there's not a lot of 30-year-olds that I know, as far as where we lived before. You'll find that a lot of military families have kids younger.
Tom Rowland: So do you think that 30-year-olds have older kids or younger kids?
Capt. Scott Brown: Oh, I'd say younger.
Tom Rowland: Like, they're just getting started.
Capt. Scott Brown: They're just getting started.
Tom Rowland: And we were just getting started at 28.
Lindsey Brown: They don't have any — or they're not ready to.
Tom Rowland: 30 is a funny time, though, because if you're not married at 30, there's a pretty good chance you might make it through your whole thirties without getting married. And then as 40 approaches, you might be like, "Oh, man, I'm past 40, maybe I better get married." But it's a funny time, because a lot of your friends are getting married. There's weddings all the time. I happen to miss all of that because I was down in Key West or in Wyoming when all my friends got married, and I didn't go to any of them. None of those people are listening to this because we're no longer friends.
Capt. Scott Brown: I think I've been to two weddings so far in my lifetime.
Lindsey Brown: One was your sister's.
Capt. Scott Brown: Yeah. I mean, I'm always gone.
Tom Rowland: So you think that people are having kids a little bit later?
Capt. Scott Brown: Absolutely. I think our culture kind of has dictated that.
Tom Rowland: Why do you think that is?
Capt. Scott Brown: I don't know, man. I honestly don't know.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. It felt about right for me. I remember the first person that was a close friend of ours that came down here. I can remember this like it was yesterday. We were living on Ramrod Key, and our friends, Chip and Susan, came down with their new baby. And Cynthia tells me, "Chip and Susan are coming with their new baby." And I was like, "What?" First thing I'm thinking is, they're my age, and I'm not old enough to have a baby. What are they doing? I was just in shock. And then here they come, and they drive right up, and they get out — "Here, meet the baby." And I was like, "This is insane. Y'all aren't old enough to have a baby." And then for, like, months after that trip, I was like, "Wow, maybe I am old enough to have a baby." And then there's this whole different kind of mindset. It didn't really mess me up, but it was kind of a period in your life where you're kinda like, "Wow, things are really changing. I'm getting older." And it wasn't that long after that that my wife and I started talking about it. But it took that first person to show us that it was possible, or that these are things that you guys should be thinking about. And I don't even know if — we were definitely married. But yeah, that was weird.
Capt. Scott Brown: Yeah. We definitely didn't think about it.
Lindsey Brown: I mean, we didn't plan anything. But we did both know, I think, that we wanted to have kids a little bit earlier. Just because — do you disagree? I think we both wanted to go ahead and get it done, just because we don't wanna be super old and not be able to do things with the kids.
Capt. Scott Brown: To caveat on that, I wanted to be able to run, jump, and swim with my kid. I didn't wanna be that old man that couldn't do what my kid could do. I wanted to have just as much fun. I'm actually a giant kid, kinda — a two-hundred-and-eight-pound kid. I wanted to be able to do everything that Graydon could do. And Lindsey always makes fun of me. She's like, "Do you know how fast a kid is?" I'm like, "Yeah, but you don't know how fast I am." I still wanna be an athlete even when I'm older. And I don't think you can do that to your true potential if you're 40 years old by the time your kid becomes a teenager. So I wanna be able to enjoy my time with my kid and time that I thought I was gonna have.
Tom Rowland: So what about the diving and stuff? Are you getting him in the water?
Capt. Scott Brown: Yep, absolutely.
Tom Rowland: What about Chandler?
Capt. Scott Brown: Yep, same thing. We're trying to improve water confidence. If you live in the state of Florida and you don't have your kid in the water, you're wrong. Because, as you know, the state is covered in water. Swimming pools in everybody's backyard.
Tom Rowland: Not so much in Key West, but when you fly over Miami, literally, there's a swimming pool in everyone's backyard. And the kids are going to be around water, and probably unsupervised in one shape or form. And there's some really incredible programs to get the kids to be able to be self-sufficient in the water and survival — where they just kinda roll over on their back and take a breath and then roll over, and they're making it. But I used to freak people out real bad over at the Casa Marina. They had this thing where we could have a membership at the Casa Marina. And so every day, I took Turner to the Casa Marina and took him swimming, and he was really young. Like, younger than Chandler.
Capt. Scott Brown: Absolutely. We did the same thing with Graydon.
Tom Rowland: So with your expertise around the water, what method did you choose to teach the kids?
Capt. Scott Brown: So I didn't teach them, for once.
Tom Rowland: That's the first thing.
Capt. Scott Brown: That's the first thing. I'm not gonna do that. It's hard enough teaching grown men how to be divers. So we had a woman in Destin. I think her name was, like, Coach Mary or something like that. And she had a regimen that got kids right as far as the water goes. Sometimes I'd walk in and I'd be like, "Yo, this is ruthless." But hey, their water confidence skyrocketed. So whatever she's teaching was the right answer, because — I think Graydon was one and a half or two years old when he started that. And it was a whole summer-long program. He was able to dive subsurface and grab rings in, like, two feet of water. And to see a toddler do that, you're like, "Yo, that looks weird. That's unnatural." I'm sure you've seen the infants flip over on their back in the pools.
Tom Rowland: And that's what we had with my son. That's what we did. And I would just have him, holding him, face down just above the water, and just kinda slowly, slowly, slowly let him down and then just let him go. And he would kinda turn like crazy, and then he would just stay there until somebody came to get him. And it's like, wow. They have a really different muscle structure, and as you grow, your buoyancy changes. But it's almost like it's a very natural thing for their buoyancy to be where their mouth is above the water with very little effort. And if they just stop doing anything, they just roll right over. If they keep trying to swim, they're gonna stay face down. And I don't know what that's called, and we didn't take a course, but I kind of heard about it. I was like, "I'm just gonna take him," and I would just kinda pull Turner to me, and I would get his chin wet. And then I would get just his lips wet. And then I would be like, "Okay, just a little bit under. Okay, here we go." And somebody told me you're supposed to blow in their face, so I'd blow in his face. And I don't know if it worked, but he totally got it. So easy. And then same thing with Hayden. He did the same thing. But the funny thing was, I was so dead set — "I'm gonna teach Turner how to swim when he is an infant." And then with Hayden, it was a little bit older. And then with Hannah, she was older. Because — I don't know, I guess you become a little more seasoned as a parent, and it's like, "Okay, there's more time here, there's no urgency." If they're a toddler, they're certainly not gonna be crawling in someone's backyard. There's a little more time. There wasn't so much urgency with Hayden, and then wasn't so much with Hannah. But it was so important to teach him how to swim early.
Tom Rowland: So do you get him in the water a lot?
Capt. Scott Brown: A lot. So, like, every time we catch a fish now — especially bonefish, just because you don't wanna take bonefish out of the water, you try to take them out as minimally as possible — we'll get Graydon in the water with them. One, it's fun for the kids. It's an experience that you can't replicate. Two, it improves water confidence. So yeah, he might be up to his neck, but you know what? He's fine with that.
Tom Rowland: What about the swimming pool?
Capt. Scott Brown: He loves the swimming pool. We don't really get to the swimming pool much. We're always on the boat. Most of our free time is in that boat. And we're kinda lucky because Lindsey and I both enjoy that. People ask us how we do this a lot, and it's fifty-fifty. Your spouse has to enjoy it as much as you do. And it's an adventure for us. Every day is never the same. We're always having fun out there. It can get kinda brutal sometimes — like, when the kids are just like, "Yo, we've had it," we're just like, "Alright, we've had it too, we're ready to give up." But few and far between has it ever been like that. Graydon — this kid is like superhuman. He'll stay on the boat with you all day long.
Tom Rowland: Really?
Capt. Scott Brown: Yeah. It's weird. We just had him out in the boat with a couple of my friends all day long. He had, like, one breakdown, and other than that, he's out there. He enjoys it a lot, because the last thing I wanna do is burn them out.
Tom Rowland: I'm surprised that he can make it all day long like that. But what would you say when somebody's getting started — how do you do that?
Capt. Scott Brown: Number one, every kid is totally different. There is no same answer. The way that we did it for Graydon, you can't do it for any other kid, because Chandler is a totally different kid than Graydon is. And I'm not gonna do the same thing that I did for Graydon for Chandler. So when people ask me, they're like, "Hey, man, how are you doing it? What's the secret?" — because we have quite a few people asking us — I'm like, hey, number one, not every kid is the same. You gotta figure it out on your own, buddy. Because just because my three-year-old's doing it does not necessarily mean the way that I brought him up into doing this is gonna be the same for your kid. But I will say this, and I'm sure you know this: you're a product of your environment. So if the only thing that Lindsey and I do in our free time is hunt and fish, what do you think our kids are gonna be doing? We never press it upon them.
Lindsey Brown: I think another factor of that is that we don't have family close. So it's not like we can call nana and papa and be like, "Hey, can you watch the kids? We're gonna go do this." They have no choice but to come with us. We've never, like, had a babysitter or anything like that.
Capt. Scott Brown: We've had a babysitter twice in a lifetime.
Lindsey Brown: Yeah. So it's like, if we wanna go fishing, the kids are coming with us.
Tom Rowland: That was the same with us. We just didn't know many people, and certainly didn't know who we could trust or whatever. And getting a babysitter — it was a long time before we got a babysitter. And then today, I look at some really cool things, like the people that'll go shop for you at the store. God, that seems amazing. It just seems amazing, because I was trying to tell somebody what it was like to raise the kids when you have no family around whatsoever. And it's like, well, if you need something at the store, you gotta pack them all up, and you're going to the store. That's the thing. And that might take all day, or it might take fifteen minutes. You're not sure. And it's like, man, that's the hardest thing. And then I see these services now, and I'm like, "Man, we could've used that." Somebody go get your groceries, bring them to your house.
Capt. Scott Brown: You probably wouldn't have used it, though.
Tom Rowland: Probably not. I know what you're saying. In hindsight, you're like, "Oh, I would use that." But you get so busy, it's just like, that's just what you're gonna do. Plus, oftentimes you're looking for an outing.
Capt. Scott Brown: Absolutely.
Lindsey Brown: "We'll go to Publix, it'll be great."
Capt. Scott Brown: Yeah. We're not fishing all the time, though, honestly. We fish maybe two to three times a week, but the time that we do spend out there is 110%, because your kid's not gonna be entertained unless you're catching fish. So you better get on it. You better know where and when to be there. And the learning curve out here is steep, as you know. That's something that we've been able to harp on, just because that great fishery is in our backyard.
Tom Rowland: But you seem to be doing pretty well with it.
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