Article by Capt. Franky Pettolina
Wow! Summer is flying by. Here we are in the last Coastal Fisherman issue before the White Marlin Open. The issue before The Big One. The Main Event. The Superbowl, Daytona 500, Christmas and Mardis Gras all rolled into one big Fish Burrito! Ever since I was 10 years old this has been the highlight of my summer. All of the major players will be in town. A working class stiff has the same chance at winning as the most seasoned of crews on a multi-million dollar battlewagon. There will be parties. Fortunes will be made and hearts will be broken. Bucket lists fulfilled and dreams shattered. All of the above.
I have never won the Open. Over the course of my fishing career I have weighed three whites during the tournament. None of them were big enough. They were close, but still a couple of squid and mullet kabobs shy of the big cardboard check. My mom was the Top Lady Angler one year. She was holding tenth place angler overall, and the “Last Call” was holding the same place in the boat standings until we got bumped on the very last day. You may ask who the mate was on the boat that bumped both my Mother and my boat out of the standings? Chris Evans. If you follow this paper regularly you will recognize that name because Mr. Evans is currently part of “Team Last Call”. I still haven’t forgiven him, and some day I will exact my revenge! I am sure he just read that sentence and knows that he should be sleeping with one eye open for the foreseeable future.
The best I have ever placed in the Open was 6th place for Top Boat Overall. That was back in 2010. On the first day of the tournament that year we caught a white marlin and my first ever longbilled spearfish out of Ocean City (I had caught longbilled spears in Venezuela before, but they are very rare in either place). It wasn’t a great day, but it was still a special part of that week. The second day was my big day though. During the ride out, several guys from my charter were up on the bridge with Dad and me. As we were approaching our spot for the day one of the guy pointed out a “bunch of porpoises” to Travis, my second mate at the time. I didn’t even bother to look. Thankfully Travis did. He saw right away that these “porpoises” were actually white marlin corralling a school of bait. At one point I counted over a dozen whites on the outskirts of the bait ball, and I am sure there were many more lurking below. It was still a half hour until the start of fishing time, so we circled the boat around the bait ball and watched the white marlin getting fat and happy. It was a really cool thing to see, but so hard not to fish on. That was one of the longest half hours of my life. And of course right before the time for “lines in” was called on the VHF radio the bait ball broke up and the fish disappeared.
At 8:30 AM, Travis and I put the baits out. We were on high alert but nothing happened. Well nothing happened for about two hours. But we kept circling and Dad said we were marking some bait and fish on the sounder. Then it started. We caught a single white marlin around 10:30 AM. Then another single at 11:00 AM. And another at 11:15 AM. Followed by singles roughly every 20 minutes or so until we had a half a dozen total.
It was then that my buddies started calling to see where we were. Up until this point we were all by ourselves. This was before texting offshore was possible and our budget doesn’t allow for a sat phone now, so we sure as heck didn’t have one seven years ago. Dad and I share one very firm philosophy when it comes to fishing. We won’t lie to our friends and we won’t ignore them just because we are getting a bite, or two or half a dozen. I am pretty sure it was Capt. Gary Stamm that asked for our general location. He didn’t press the issue, but we also didn’t want to leave him hanging. Knowing we were about to open the flood gates, Dad switched Gary to a less populated VHF channel and quickly gave him our coordinates. Of course, everybody that could hear us switched to the same channel and soon there were a couple dozen boats fishing near us. We missed our next two bites, but quickly rebounded by catching back-to-back doubleheaders. We ended up going 10 for 12 on whiteys that day. This is still my best day on white marlin in Ocean City. Of the 10 whites we got to the boat, none of them looked bigger than 50 or so pounds. Most were 35 pounders. But it was pretty darned good fishing.
Of those couple of dozen boats that came to us when we put our location on the air, one was the “Shelley II”. As we were trolling pretty much right next to each other I watched them hook up. This was about the same time as our two misses. Travis and I watched their fish jumping. We could tell it was significantly larger than anything we had hooked during the day. A little while later they hauled the fish aboard. It ended up weighing over 90 pounds and landed them the biggest cardboard check given out that week. I would say that I probably have not forgiven them for catching what was clearly supposed to be “our fish” any more than I have forgiven Mr. Evans for stealing my trophies back in the day.
So my second day still ranks as my best day ever in OC. How did the third day go? Cup your hands together. Look down at them. How many White Marlins do you see? Yup, that is how many I caught on Day 3. But I did have enough releases to hold on to one of the top ten spots and I got to watch my winning fish get caught by someone else… I will have my revenge!!!
All joking aside, I am still friends with the crew of the “Shelley II” and Mr. Evans is very much a brother to me. He even married the girl I refer to as the “sister I never wanted”, and I performed the ceremony. To share that with two people I am so close with ranks right up there with winning the White Marlin Open. Except for the big cardboard check.
Some crazy things happen on the water during the first full week of August and I want to wish everyone the best of luck in the tournament. The White Marlin Open is our big show of the summer and I hope everyone comes through it safely and the fish bite like ravenous, starving dogs!
Oops. I almost forgot. Several of my loyal readers have asked if I will be sharing more of my adventures with “The Little Guy” that I told y’all about last week. Absolutely. They are too good not to share. But I have to wait until after the tournament is over before I let slip any details on roast beef for marlin bait. I will share my location in the middle of a hot bite, but there are some things that have to be kept secret!
Capt. Franky Pettolina is Co-Captain of the charter boat, “Last Call” and President of the Ocean City Marlin Club.
