Article by Capt. Franky Pettolina
In the early 20’s of December in 2006, I was driving northbound through the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel. I was on my way home for the holidays after the start of the giant bluefin tuna season in Morehead City, North Carolina. This was back before tunas became “Wicked”. The “Tails Up” hand signal was still some Hawaiian slang for “hanging loose”. The breaker wasn’t going POW!!! And my One Armed Buddy wasn’t #fishingtwiceashardwithhalfthearms yet. Or at least he wasn’t famous for it.
Anyways, I was driving home for the holidays. The start of our season had been pretty good on the giants. Dad and I already managed to catch 6 out of our first 8 or 9 bites. I think we may have fished about a dozen days. As soon as I got through the second of the tunnels I was ready to get on the phone and get some bragging done. The reason I had waited so long was because I had started my drive home at 4:30 AM and I didn’t think it was quite fair to call any of my fishing pals before sun up on a non-fishing day. Now that the sun was up I was hitting the speed dial. Remember that this was back in 2006. The phones weren’t quite smart yet. They had cameras and we could send texts, but that was about it.
My first call was to one of my most long-term fishing chums. My good amigo, Robby Paquette. The season before was my first in Morehead City, and I had only managed to catch one giant bluefin out of a measly three bites. Robby had been with me for that one catch, and to be honest I probably would not have caught it without him. It was half of a doubleheader, with only Robby, my Dad and me on the “Last Call”. Anyone who has watched the show on TV knows that doubles are tricky. Well let me tell you, when a double is your very first encounter with giants it is even more tricky. With Robby’s help one of the two fish was landed and rewarded with a first class plane ticket to Tokyo along with a guided tour of the World Famous Tskuji Fish Market. The payout was modest - $11.00 per pound. The fish “cored out” at 283 pounds. I’ll let you do the math.
So I couldn’t wait for Robby to answer the phone so I could tell him about my new found luck, err, I mean success at catching giants. Well, guess what. That oaf didn’t do me the courtesy of answering the phone!!! It was a little after 8:00 in the morning. I knew he was up. What the heck!!!
I found out what was up about 20 minutes later when my phone rang. I looked at the caller ID and it was Robby (the phones were smart enough to tell us who was calling at least). I immediately answered and started giving Robby a hard time for sleeping in and not answering my earlier call. He gave it right back and told me he was too busy to answer. TOO BUSY????? When he knew that I had fish stories to tell him!!! That was unacceptable. Or at least I thought it was until he told me exactly what it was that he was too busy doing. He was fishing. Striper fishing to be exact. Rockfish. Striped Mullet. Linesiders. Morone saxatilis. One fish that neither Robby nor myself was especially proficient at catching.
I figured I could put the heroics of my Giant tales on hold to hear Robby lament about drifting around with slimy eels on his hook and nothing in his cooler to take home for dinner. Lord knows we had both been there too many times before. I wouldn’t feel right bragging about the 6 fish I had caught knowing full well that Robby had been freezing in his john boat getting skunked. So I asked him how many he had caught, knowing full well that the number was going to be some multiple of zero.
I was just about to extend my condolences to him on his rough morning of fishing when something registered in my mind. Something about his answer didn’t sound quite right. I asked him again how many he had caught. I was sure I had heard him incorrectly the first time.
He said it again. “I don’t know, probably somewhere around 50.”
So I answered in the best way I knew how. “50 what?”
After a laugh and a bit of profanity he told me yet again. 50 rockfish. And they were decent rockfish too. All in the mid 30-inch class, not little pups. I couldn’t believe it. I needed all of the details.
So he gave them to me. Much like my initial disbelief, another of our fishing buddies told him the day before about a wide open striper blitz less than a mile off the beach, just a little south of the Ocean City Inlet. Robby had to see it for himself to believe it. So he went. And he was made a believer. There were huge schools of bait with rockfish and whales feeding on them right beyond the surf off of Assateague. Huge flocks of gannets and gulls were diving on them. It was like a nature show out there. Robby said he was catching a fish on every cast he made. Bucktails, popping plugs, Storm lures, it didn’t matter. Anything you wanted to cast would get bit. And get bit quickly.
After hearing the excitement in Robby’s voice when he was telling me the story I knew I had to get in on some of this fishing. I asked him when WE were going next. He asked me if I was free the following morning. Of course I said yes. He told me to meet him at the boat at 6:30 the next morning. I told him it was a plan. He said he was going to invite Captain Gary Stamm to go with us too. Those fish were in for some trouble!
That fast I forgot all about my Giants. I don’t think I even mentioned them to Robby, and he didn’t ask about them either!
As the sun was coming up the next morning I was climbing into Robby’s john boat along with Captain Gary. We each had a couple of spinning rods ready to go and a plethora of extra rigs in our tackle boxes in anticipation of the red hot bite. It was a crisp, cool December morning but there wasn’t much wind. We were ready to fish.
Robby fired up the boat and we were on our way. As soon as we cleared the no wake zone Robby put the coals to her and we were flying out the inlet and making the bend to the south. In no time we were right back where Robby had shellacked them the morning before, but there were no whales. No gannets. No gulls. And there sure as heck weren’t any rockfish. I felt like I had been duped. That was until I looked at the dismay on Robby’s face. This wasn’t some sort of elaborate prank. He was dumbfounded that there were no fish where there had been so many the day before.
We were already on the water and we were rigged up, so out came the binoculars. The search began. Gary was on the bow with the binoculars and I was sitting next to Robby and we worked our way further south and then back to the north. Right about the time we were ready to call it quits and go get some breakfast Gary spotted something. He told Robby that he couldn’t be sure, but he thought he saw some life way up the beach.
Now let me tell you one thing, Robby ain’t afraid to be hard on his equipment when it comes to catching fish. He put that rig into the wind and we were heading up the beach at warp speed (to borrow a quote we had heard from Capt. Mark “The Hammer” Hill some years earlier). In no time, we were a half of a mile off the beach at the north end of Ocean City. And so were the whales. And the gannets. And the gulls. AND THE ROCKFISH!!!
Each of us hooked up as soon as we made our first cast. In a matter of minutes the metal deck of that john boat was thumping like the double bass drums at a Metallica concert. Actually, I guess it was more like double striped bass drums. Our limit of 6 fish was filled. All of the fish were 34 to 37-inches. And it wasn’t even 8:30 yet.
Over the next hour or two we probably caught somewhere around 100 rockfish. As long as we were near the birds and the whales we would get bit on every cast. Again, it didn’t matter what type of lure hit the water. The one thing I figured out early on was to mash down the barb on any hook I was using. That made for a quicker release and I didn’t have to pull the fish into the boat to get my lure out of its mouth. I am pretty sure that is why I handily out caught Gary and Robby 2 fish to their 1 that day… or at least that is the way I remember it!!!
It was the best day of rockfishing I ever had. Probably one of the best days I will ever have. I know that I have not matched it since, and we tried several more times that week. We had some success, but nothing like the first days of that bite. And to experience it with two of my good buddies made it even better.
Oh yeah, and while Gary was cleaning the fish that day I did get a chance to brag about the Giant bluefins I had caught the week prior, but everybody at the cleaning table was more interested in hearing about the stripers... and where we caught them!
Have a good winter everyone. I hope you find some fish wherever you are, and you get to share the catching of them with your friends and family. I wish you all a Merry Fishmas and a Fishy New Year!!!!
Capt. Franky Pettolina is Co-Captain of the charter boat, “Last Call”, owner of Pettolina Marine Surveying, Inc. and President of the Ocean City Marlin Club.
