Article by Capt. Franky Pettolina
I think the first article I ever wrote about fishing in the “internet age” appeared in the Ocean City Marlin Club Monthly Newsletter, “The Marlin Bill”. Back when we used to have a monthly newsletter that is. That was probably in the late 90s or maybe early 2000s. I had just begun my term as a Board Member and never even considered the idea that I would be President of the Club some day. Hard to believe that was a couple of decades ago now. In that article I talked about how much information could be found on Tidalfish.com and a new one that came out called Sportfishermen.com. Just like I have trouble believing how long ago that was, I have trouble remembering the last time I logged in to Tidalfish and I think that SFC went the way of the dinosaurs!
Fast forward to this morning when I was looking at a video of a big Blue Marlin that eluded capture during the recent Big Rock Tournament down in North Carolina. I followed that up with checking out all of the different Facebook fishing pages I belong to (which reminds me, I need to update the Last Call’s page) and logged in some Instagram time gawking at pictures of the plethora of recent Swordfish caught by my friend Nick down in Islamorada. I covered the East Coast in about a half hour, and conversed with friends from as far away as Kona, Hawaii. The internet, especially social media, has made the world a very small place.
One thing that kind of bugged me while I was otherwise enjoying all of the cool photos, posts, and videos was some of the comments being made by the keyboard warrior crowd. This guy could have done it better. That guy thought killing fish was bad. Some other dude wanted to fire all of the crewmembers on a boat. Sheeeesh! What is wrong with people?!?! We have the greatest piece of information sharing technology in the palms of our hands and all they want to do is be jerks! I just can’t fathom that mentality. Didn’t Mommy or Daddy ever teach them that if you can’t say something nice don’t say anything at all? Constructive criticism is one thing, but the crapola I was reading was plain old bashing and trashing. To what end I am not sure.
But enough of that negativity. Where I wanted to go with this column was to point out some cool social media and other internet places to check out fishing stuff. Like I did a few decades ago in that old “Marlin Bill” article.
I will start close to home. On the Facebook front there are pages for most of the local charter boats. You can find them by searching the boat name. But that is just the tip of the Ocean City iceberg. There are many other pages like Fishing Ocean City MD, Ocean City MD Fishing Community, Mid Atlantic Small Boat Fishing, Open Boat Mid Atlantic Region, and a host of similar pages that will also pop up. Don’t forget to follow the local marina pages, tournament pages, the Marlin Club page, and of course the Coastal Fisherman page. I am not as much of an Instagram guy, but there are many of the same type of accounts to follow on there.
Branching out from Ocean City the possibilities are endless. A few of my favorites on Facebook are Ecuagringo Marlin & Big Game Fishing Outfitters (all about Galapagos fishing), BillfishReport.com (all things about marlins, sails, spears, and swords), Marlin Billfish (another one that centers on critters with the pointy noses), Sportfishing Classifieds Worldwide (a wide variety of sportfishing topics from every place imaginable), and also my buddy Fly Navarro’s page (loaded with cool fishing and travel stuff from my crazy Cuban buddy!). On the Instagram I would say my favorite to follow is captnickstanzyck (awesome swordfish posts). Just like Facebook though, be sure to search around. Tons of fishing related accounts are on there.
Getting away from the social media, there are plenty of valuable resources for the fisherman on the web. I know many of my readers are super internet savvy (moreso than me I am sure), but I will list a few of the valuable tools in my offshore kit. First of all would have to be the weather pages and apps. My favorite is Buoyweather. I have found the forecasts to be accurate and I like to be able to pick exact locations on the chart, rather than the broad sweeping “Baltimore Canyon to Cape Charles Light”. I mean, that’s only an entire fishing region! As a side note, if you plan on fishing more than a few times per year the monthly subscription pays for itself in no time. Other popular weather sites and apps include Fishweather and Windy. In my opinion, any of these are better and more accurate than the traditional NOAA forecasts. There are also several great fishing condition analysis providers. Offshore satellite services, Ripcharts, ROFFS, and SSTOL are some of the most popular in the fishing crowd. Again, if you are planning on fishing offshore more than a few times in a season any of these services are a must have. Money well spent, believe me.
I hope that at least some of you have found some useful information in this installment of Fish Stories. To my loyal readers that are better versed on the web than yours truly, be sure to let me know any good ones that I might be missing out on. Just don’t let me catch you being an internet butthead or keyboard kook. I will blast ya!! That’s a promise. Being a courteous fish head doesn’t stop just because the boat is tied up and you are off of the water.
Capt. Franky Pettolina
