Article by Capt. Franky Pettolina
The last issue of the season. Wow! It seems like just yesterday I was telling y’all about taking one last rod out of my garage to fill the final open rod rack on the “Last Call”. Another season of the Coastal Fisherman has come and gone in barely the blink of an eye. I once had a charter client tell me that every summer seems to go by quicker than the one before it, and I am pretty sure he was correct.
That reminds me of the story of the guy with the jar of marbles in his garage. If you haven’t heard it I am going to tell you the short version since it doesn’t relate directly to fishing. Or then again maybe it does.
Anyway, there is this guy who spends every Sunday in his garage talking to his buddies on his HAM radio. It was his favorite thing to do. One Sunday morning he came across an older gentleman talking on the radio. The guy had a golden voice that really captured the listener. This older gentleman told the story about 1,000 marbles. He was thinking about it and figured out that the average life span is about 75 years, give or take. That would equal 3,900 Sundays. He was in his fifties when he thought of this, so somewhere around 2,900 of the Sundays were already gone. That meant that he had about a thousand Sundays left. So he went to all of the toy stores he could find and bought up a thousand marbles and put them into a clear plastic jar. Each Sunday morning he would go out into the garage and fire up his radio and as he was doing so he would throw one of the marbles away. Over the years he would talk to his buddies every Sunday and he watched his marble supply get smaller and smaller. Watching his supply dwindle, he realized how valuable his time was and how he should make the most of it. And with that he said that he was signing off because he was going to go take his wife to breakfast and spend the day with her. He went on to say that he had just taken the last marble out of the jar. At that point in the story, the listener also turned off his radio and went to spend the day with his wife and kids.
I first heard this story a few years ago, and it is always in the back of my mind. I won’t lie to you, the summer of 2017 has not been my favorite summer. There has been a pile of crappy weather. I had my slowest White Marlin Open in a long time, if not ever. Tuna fishing has been close to non-existent since June, and even back then it was only just okay. Marlin fishing has been hit or miss, and my all time favorite, when all else fails, “go to” fish, the mahi-mahi, has been scarce. It has been a truly difficult summer.
But when I think about it a little more, it hasn’t been all bad. I was lucky enough to win some money in two of the tournaments I fished (thanks to my all-time favorite, when all else fails, “go to” fish). A young man caught his first blue marlin on my boat. An older gentleman caught his first blue marlin on my boat. There were some days with good action on the inshore lumps catching a variety of mackerels and other species. I got to spend more than a few dozen days on the ocean with my Father and one of my best friends. Mom has been able to join us on more than a couple of trips, too. And she has been catching some white marlin on some recent trips with my long-time client and friend, Brooke Duvall. Really not that bad of a summer.
Thinking about it in a broader sense, there have been some other really cool things in the summer of 2017. I never got to see it, but there was a whale shark making regular appearances in the early season. I don’t ever recall as many sheepshead being caught in the Ocean City Inlet, and some of them are monsters! People got to fish during a full solar eclipse on August 21st and now it looks like the white marlin might finally be showing up in decent numbers for the finish of the season.
I would like to thank the Jock family for having me aboard again for this season of the Coastal Fisherman. Larry and I have had some good laughs along the way, and I have only missed my deadline three or four times (I will need to find out how many times Capt. Mark Sampson has missed his!) Twenty one more marbles have left our collective jars since I told y’all about taking that one last rod down to the “Last Call” back in May. I hope you were able to make the most of your summer of fishing and enjoyed the “Fish Stories” I have told along the way as much as I have enjoyed writing them. Like my friend Austin on the “Primary Search” reminds me regularly, “What a great time to be alive!” I hope to see ya around the docks or on the water.
Capt. Franky Pettolina is Co-Captain of the charter boat, “Last Call” and President of the Ocean City Marlin Club.
