Capt. Chad Raney

Captain Chad Raney owns Old Hat Fishing Charters out of Miami Beach and has fished South Florida professionally for more than twenty years. His expertise spans the whole water column, from planer trolling and high-speed jigging to deep dropping for golden tilefish, and he has a gift for making advanced techniques simple. In his In The Spread videos, Raney teaches in-line planer fishing, vertical speed jigging on wrecks and reefs, tilefish deep dropping, and the boat positioning that puts anglers on Gulf Stream pelagics and structure fish.

Instructor's videos

Captain Chad Raney has a motto that tells you everything about how he fishes: from the bottom all the way to the surface, we got you covered. Raney owns and runs Old Hat Fishing Charters out of Miami Beach, and he is a lifelong South Florida fisherman who has worked these waters professionally for more than twenty years. Very few captains are equally dangerous jigging a wreck in hundreds of feet of water, pulling planers along a nearshore reef, and dropping baits on golden tilefish in the deep. Raney is.

What makes him such a good instructor is not just the range, it is the way he teaches. Raney takes techniques that intimidate most anglers and makes them look easy, because his philosophy is simple: if you can understand it, you can do it. He runs the Old Hat, a fast custom 43-footer, out of the inlet between Miami Beach and Hollywood, where the Gulf Stream sits close to the beach and produces sailfish, wahoo, dolphin, kingfish, tuna, and amberjack year-round.

Planer fishing is one of his signatures. Raney breaks down in-line planers the way few people can, covering bridle rigs, wind-on leaders, planer sizing, ballyhoo rigging, and the boat driving that keeps baits running at the right depth through the whole pass. It is a method that puts fish in the boat when the boats around you are watching empty lines, and he shows exactly why it works.

He is just as sharp on high-speed vertical jigging over wrecks, reefs, and oil platforms for amberjack, grouper, snapper, and wahoo, and on the drift management and bottom reading it takes to catch golden tilefish out of soft clay hundreds of feet down.

Through all of it, Raney reads bait, current, and conditions to fish where the fish actually are instead of where they are supposed to be.

In his In The Spread videos, Raney teaches in-line planer trolling, speed jigging fundamentals, deep dropping for tilefish, and the boat positioning that ties it together. If a technique has ever felt out of reach, he is the captain who makes it click.

Personal Website:
https://oldhat.com