Article by Capt. Franky Pettolina
I was walking down to my driveway to get into my truck when my phone pinged with a message. After I got buckled into the driver’s seat I unlocked my phone to see who was messaging me. I was somewhat surprised to see that it was my friend Dale Timmons. For those of you that are new to the area or that have not been long time readers of the Coastal Fisherman, Dale founded the paper back in the 70s and later sold it to our current leader and Editor in Chief Larry in the early 2000s. I don’t get to see Dale much these days, so I was even more surprised when he told me that he was behind my boat and was wondering if I happened to be in the cabin. I told him that I was not, but that I was on my way to the marina, so I would see him in a few minutes. His response really piqued my interest as to the reason for his visit. He had a package for me!
As I pulled in to Ocean City Fishing Center I couldn’t help but grin as I saw Dale walking up to the “Last Call”. It reminded me of all of the times in my youth waiting for Dale, or his lovely wife Suzanne, to come take my picture for the paper. For ever so brief a moment I was a teen again, standing on the docks at Bahia Marina. That moment was very fleeting however. A middle aged me got out of my truck at the Ocean City Fishing Center to greet my old friend. We have both gotten older, but the handshakes were still firm and the smiles every bit as genuine as they were thirty years ago.
I could see that Dale had a large plastic envelope tucked under his arm as I invited him to board the “Last Call”. Once our pleasantries had been exchanged and we knew the circumstances of our spouses and other relatives, Dale got down to the crux of his visit. He had fishing pictures for me. A great big collection of Ocean City fishing history as documented through his camera lens over the years. I was right back to being the excited teen version of me again! I couldn’t wait to look at all of the photos.
Dale pulled a few out from the packet. It turns out that he had been following some recent exchanges on my social media where I was discussing how to identify longbilled spearfish versus roundscale spearfish versus white marlin. Let me go on the record here and say that two of the three are quite common in our area. One is not. When in doubt, it is a white or a roundscale. Trust me. I will spare you any more of that rant. Just trust me.
(Editors note: for this reason, periodically throughout the season we run a graphic presentation of a white marlin versus a longbilled spearfish. The last one ran in the August 7, 2019 issue).
The pictures that Dale pulled from the packet were a pretty good portion of the total of all of the longbilled spearfish that he had photographed over his almost 30 years with the Coastal Fisherman. Now I am not saying that he got a picture of every longbill caught in that time period, but for the first couple decades of the paper, most of the longbills caught were brought back in as trophies. It wasn’t until the mid to late 90s that the trend turned to releasing them, and I know that there were some photos that were missing or that had been lost in the shuffle. But would anyone like to take a guess as to how many pictures there were for several decades worth of longbilled spearfish captures in Ocean City? A hundred? Nope? Fifty? HA! Twenty? Keep going. Right about a dozen. That is something to think about. Even if we assume that this was only a quarter of the photos Dale had taken, it doesn’t add up to 50 over a couple of decades. Like I said, something to think about.
After we got off of the topic of the quantity of longbilled spears, or the lack thereof, Dale spread some other photos out. I was looking at the faces of legends. Some I knew personally like Big Al Fields or Buckshot Peiper. Some I knew by reputation only. Some had passed on before my time in Ocean City began. To be trusted with these treasures really moved me. I promised Dale that I would get the photos scanned and on display on social media and at the Ocean City Marlin Club. About twenty or so of the photos are already on my Facebook page. By the time this article sees print I will be fishing the MidAtlantic Tournament. That means I will have two lay days to catch up on some scanning. I will do my best to get as many of the pictures on the web as possible. After that, I will get them to the Club and on to the Club’s social media. Ultimately, once the pics are properly recorded for posterity, I intend to get the pictures to the people featured in them, or to the relatives of the people that have passed on. It is going to be a fun little project, and I am very thankful to Dale for sharing his collection with me. I am guessing some day years from now Larry will be meeting someone like my buddy Ayrton “Crouton” Pryor at a marina with some sort of futuristic holographic picture disc full of memories for him to pass on. Maybe there will even be a pic or two of me and Mr. Evans in there.
Capt Franky Pettolina is Co-Captain of the charter boat, “Last Call”, owner of Pettolina Marine Surveying, Inc. and multi-term President of the Ocean City Marlin Club. If you would like to book a charter on the “Last Call”, please call 443-783-3699 or 410-251-0575.
