VENTNOR, N.J. — July 2, 2015 — Some days on the fishing pier, all you catch is a breeze, some sunburn and bloodworm guts on your pants.
No matter how much you emulate the old-timers, copying their baits and mimicking their little twitches with the rod, sometimes you just haul in seaweed while “Harold the cement guy,” “Father Frank” and “Kenny the cop” are killing kingfish left and right.
That’s why they call it “fishing, not catching,” one saying goes. If that one doesn’t make a flustered fisherman feel better, the regulars and ringers who can’t seem to miss a fish will tell you “a day out fishing always beats a day at work” and that’s hard to argue against – unless you’re Lou Kanter.
“Some guys are here an hour and that’s it. That’s me. If I’m not catching nothing it’s like golf. I can’t hit the ball for nothing. It’s so aggravating when I golf and to me fishing is the same way. Some people think it’s relaxing. Yeah, it’s relaxing if you’re catching something,” Kanter, the affable piermaster at the Ventnor Fishing Pier, said on a recent weekday morning.
“You’ve got the same people here every day, usually. Some guys just come out here to put a cigar in their mouth and talk to their buddies. Other guys can fish. I’ll ask Harold, ‘How many fish you catch today?’ and he’ll say ‘Oh, I caught about eight kingfish today.’ Harold does cement.”
There are a million reasons to visit the Jersey Shore, although millions of tourists and residents do the same few things: beach, boardwalks, clam bars, regular bars and roller coasters.
There are also, according to New Jersey’s Division of Fish & Wildlife, about a dozen saltwater fishing piers in the state that don’t see the same crowds but offer unrivaled views, fish stories, an ocean of stars at night and sometimes even fish, depending on the tides.