Article by Capt. Franky Pettolina
I went fishing yesterday. Finally. I got up at 3:30 AM. Made my way to the boat at 4:00 AM. The “Last Call” rolled through the Ocean City Inlet right at 5:00 AM. We were embarking on a mission to find the #FirstwhitemarlinOC. A little after 8:30 AM we were in the Norfolk Canyon setting our lines out next to the “Marli”, the “Husevo” and a few boats I didn’t recognize. The conditions looked great. There was a 10-degree temperature break. Scattered sargassum weed marked the boundary between the warm and cold side of the break. I could see dolphins (of the mammal persuasion) and pilot whales breaking the surface. Like I said, conditions looked great.
About 10 minutes after I had the spread out we had our first bite of the day. While it was not the white marlin we were hoping for, it was still good to see an energetic mahi-mahi (dolphin of the fish persuasion) jumping out of the water with my circle hook lodged in his mouth. A little while later I gaffed the young bull mahi and slid him into my fishbox. A great start to my 2017 fishing season.
Fishing was good. The action was not red hot, but it was consistent. The conditions remained promising. By the end of the day we had caught a couple of yellowfin tuna and a handful of mahi-mahi. Our teasers were attacked by a few tunas and mahi that didn’t chase our hooked baits. Flying fish skittered across the surface next to the boat multiple times. We saw many aquatic mammals and even spotted a free jumping mako shark.
Although we never had our shot at the first white marlin of the season, it was still a very enjoyable day to be on the water. One of the boats fishing next to me did raise a marlin, but they did not get a hook into it and were unable to positively ID whether it was a white or a small blue marlin. But like I said, it was an enjoyable day to be on the water. When we picked up to head home the GPS told me that we had 81 miles to go. The “Last Call” came cruising back through the Ocean City Inlet right about 6:00 PM in the evening. I was all cleaned up and home having dinner around 8 o’clock. With some fresh mahi filets and a tuna loin ready for the grill this weekend!!!
I went to bed that night knowing that I had some typing to do the next day. When I woke up this morning I went out to grab some breakfast and a copy of the Coastal Fisherman to read before I got to work. I have read every issue of the Coastal Fisherman from front to back since the very first issue I saw back in 1983 (I must say that I sorely miss the weekly Fishing with Ben Sykes stories!). So there I was enjoying a bagel and a soda pop (I’m just not a coffee guy) and perusing the issue. And what do I read in my pal Larry Jock’s opening column??? “Who would have thought we would be thankful for bluefish.”
WHAT!?!? Wait just a minute here. “Who would have thought we would be thankful for bluefish?” Larry you are killing me. I almost drove down to the office to give you a piece of my mind. But then I thought about it, and while I am not too intimidated by the Drew Carey look alike that edits and publishes this paper, I was worried I might run into Mary, or even more intimidating… Mama Jock!!! And I know if I went into that office to verbally assault Larry but ran into one of the Jock ladies instead, I would be lucky to make it out of the office alive. And I know a full recovery would not be in my cards.
So I retreated to my desk and sat here writing about mahis and tunas, all the while seething at the editorial insult that one of my favorite fish took last week. “Who would have thought we would be thankful for bluefish?”
Well Jocko, let me tell you. First off… ME!!! Why don’t we take a trip back to the 1980s. When the “Last Call” first came to Ocean City. In 1983 we were tied up on the south side of the White Marlin Marina. That first summer we ran a few charters while starting to build our Ocean City clientele, and whenever we weren’t chartered we went fun fishing. You see, there was this 10-year-old boy that loved to fish and really wanted to catch his first white marlin, and his Dad tried hard to accomplish this for him (on a side note, it didn’t happen that summer…. I had to wait quite a few years to catch my first white). So there were many days in my youth that played out just like the day I described at the start of this column. Early to rise, fish all day, come in and clean up the boat and head home to…. Wait. Stop. Hold up. At the end of the day I didn’t head right to dinner with my family. As soon as I was done helping clean up the boat, my job was to chamois the curtains and clean the fish and bait box, I grabbed my little Daiwa spinning combo and went right out to the pier at the end of our side of the marina. Using shiners on a long shank hook with a float I would fish for snapper blues off of that pier until Mom and Dad would drag me back to eat dinner. After all day hoping for my first Marlin, with no luck any of those days that summer, I was a happy little boy when I caught those snappers. Thankful is a pretty good description.
Fast forward to my teenage years when I was cutting my teeth as a mate. Bluefish trips were a big share of the Ocean City charter business those days. While not as glorious as chasing the bluewater species, there were many days that ended with smiling faces and full fish boxes after a day of bluefishing. And I didn’t quite realize it then, but the skills I learned while trolling up multiple bluefish bites, jockeying rods, boating fish, and getting lures reset as quickly as possible prepared me for my future years chasing tunas and billfish. Those fundamentals I picked up in the early years have been essential to the rest of my fishing career. To say I am thankful for that is an understatement.
Now let’s jump even further forward in my fishing life. I remember many days in the spring running around in my buddy Joey’s center console casting bucktails at schools of snappers in the bay or the inlet. We did this to stock up on shark baits for the month of June. In those years, we ran mako shark trips throughout June and fished two shark tournaments every year. I turned quite a few of those snappers into makos for my clients. Again… thankful.
One last example I will give is a little more recent. I would say it was maybe 2 years ago that I was drifting in the bay with my friend Robby and his daughter Lily. We were casting speck rigs at a mixed school of shad and bluefish. I can still picture Lily winding up her rod and cheering when she had a double of snapper blues on her rig. We would all whoop it up and I taught her to yell, “You’re my boy blue!” I am not sure who was more thankful for blues that day. Me, Lily, or her overly proud father Robby.
This spring we have all been a little caught up in the hype around the #FirstwhitemarlinOC. I know I have. But we shouldn’t forget that this has been one of, if not the best ever spring bluefish blitzes Ocean City has ever seen. Of course I am just messing with my buddy Larry about wanting to give him a piece of my mind (I don’t have too many pieces to spare), but I think we can all be thankful for these unsung heroes of the fishing world. I know I would not have had nearly as many fond memories of chasing my first White Marlin back in 1983 if it wasn’t for those snappin’ blues when we got in at night. And since I didn’t get to catch the #FirstwhitemarlinOC yesterday I might have to try my luck on some blues down in the Inlet this afternoon.
Capt. Franky Pettolina is Co-Captain of the charter boat, “Last Call” and President of the Ocean City Marlin Club.
