Article by Capt. Franky Pettolina
Recently I spent the day at the Ocean City Marlin Club’s 10th Annual Nautical Flea Market. I was helping a friend sell some stuff so I was pretty busy manning the table and doing my best to negotiate some high finance deals fairly for all the parties involved (most of the items were priced around a buck and very few were as high as ten smackeroos). My father was also helping at the table (he is a much better salesman than I am, although he is a bit tougher to negotiate with), so I was able to walk around and check out the wares at the other tables and also see the folks who had come out looking for a good deal or that “can’t live without it” item. I had made good on last week’s plan to meet my friend Greg and toast the memory of his father “Kingbone” the night before, so I may have been feeling a little rough around the edges, but overall it was an enjoyable day.
I am a bit of a fishing lure junkie. It doesn’t matter what species it is, I have a favorite lure when I am fishing for it. Freshwater fishing for panfish and small bass? I love the Roadrunner. Casting around the jetty or pretty much anywhere in the back bay? Pretty simple there, a plain white bucktail. But I guess that does vary at times. If the shad, mini-rockfish or snapper blues are around I switch over to a spec rig, usually pink or white, or a combination of the two. Moving on out to the inshore lumps, my favorite is a Clark Spoon. Mackerels, blues, smaller tuna species and even mahi-mahi, they all love the spoon. I keep a variety of sizes and rig them to fish at various depths from the surface to deep behind a planer, but I can promise you that when you see the “Last Call” trolling anywhere between the First Lump and the Jackspot there will be mostly spoons behind it.
Once I get out a little deeper it all depends on what I am targeting. For bluefin tuna I like cedar plugs and Zuker lures. For yellowfin tuna its tough to beat a green machine or a spreader bar loaded with Squidnation squids. When I am chasing mahi-mahi with lures in the canyons, I like smaller straight running lures like the C and H Lil Stubby or Moldcraft Hooker. Although I rarely target wahoo, unless specific conditions warrant it, the lure for them is an Iland Lure Ilander with a ballyhoo behind it (if you ask me on the docks I will gladly tell you what color is the best). I seldom troll lures for white marlin, but my favorite white marlin lure is an “Ahi P” by Marlin Magic. Lastly, when it comes to blue marlin my number one go to lure is the Moldcraft Wide Range.
Now what does all of that have to do with the Nautical Flea Market? With the exception of the Marlin Magic “Ahi P”, I saw all of those aforementioned lures scattered throughout the vendors’ tables. It was funny watching people assume that items were for sale because they “didn’t catch fish”. I saw so many fishy looking lures it boggled the mind. For the life of me I can’t figure out why people weren’t snatching them up. You might ask why I didn’t? Well I’ll tell ya. I have so many already! I already told you I was a fishing lure junkie! Dad’s boat would be a few knots faster if I took a few of the lures off of it. Sure some of the other non-buyers might have a collection as extensive as mine, but I find it hard to believe they all did. Plus I heard more than a few people commenting that the stuff for sale was “what didn’t work!” Picture that, thinking a bucktail doesn’t work. Or a green machine! Those two lures alone have probably caught more fish, and more varieties of fish, than all other lures combined. Yet sure enough, when I took the leftovers back to my friend’s house after the Flea Market was over, there were still an abundance of green machines and bucktails left in the crate.
One of the other things I noticed during my time at the Flea Market was that little kids love looking through the stuff on the tables. Young eyes light up when they see big hooks or fancy lures. Young imaginations begin to kick into high gear picturing the sea monsters that those things catch. Young minds also learn quickly that it is easy to get Dad or Grandpa to come off with a buck or two so they can make a purchase. Unlike a trip to the regular tackle shop or marine supply store where things are pretty hard on the wallet, the Flea Market is cheap! My favorite little kid and Grandpa exchange of the day was when my buddy, Papa Mel from the “Salty Sons” was hit up for some greenbacks by one of his grandsons. Doing his due diligence, Papa Mel inquired as to the nature of the purchase. For those of you that don’t know Mel, he is a mechanic by trade and he is addicted to tools the way I am to fishing lures. When his grandson told him he wanted the money to buy a tool kit I was almost blinded by the gleam in the proud Grandpa’s eyes.
Hanging out at the Flea Market was definitely a great way to spend my Saturday morning. I cleared my head a little from the night before. Dad and I were able to help a friend clean out some stuff he no longer needed. I gave a little kid a rubber squid since I could tell he liked it and was too shy to ask how much it cost. A future mechanic got a start with his first tool kit (with a little help from Grandpa). I only wish people would have bought more green machines and bucktails. Of course there is always next year for that!
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.
