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Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Bucks angler breeds fish maps to GPS

Joe Demalderis, co-owner of Cross Current Guide Service up in Milford near the Delaware Water Gap, makes his living taking fishermen out to where they're biting.

When trout season opens next month, he'll have a new tool: an $80 Ultimate Fishing Maps GPS Fishing Guide application, produced by Warrington-based Gogal Publishing Co., that marries the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission list of trout, bass and other streams (and rules for when and how to take them), with a pocket-sized Garmin global-positioning system, making it easier for anglers to find and drive between fishing spots and boat landings across the state.

"Pretty cool," Demalderis told me. "It's like having a navigational chart, like you'd use in a lake or saltwater, with the wrecks and reefs marked. Only it works from your car. You're in a place, you want to make a move somewhere else, you just pull it up and find what's nearby, and it tells you the shortest route, so you don't burn up $3 a gallon gas." He says he's used it to find "small brook-trout streams I could never locate before," and he's started recommending it to clients for "the guy who's in town, maybe on business, he's got four hours and a GPS, now he can go fishing in places he'd never know were right there."

This is an updated, wireless-age version of the fishing maps that founder Mike Gogal, a Temple grad and professional video producer, used to publish with the former Alfred B. Patton Co. in the 1990s after his Northeast Philadelphia neighbor taught him trout fishing. Gogal told me he sold over 50,000 maps a year, at $5 to $7 each, before his wife's death in 1996. She had handled all customer orders, and he didn't feel like going on without her.

Remarried and resettled in Warrington, Gogal began working on the next generation fishing maps two years ago with neighbor Mark Burdack, a software developer. The new map lives on a thumbnail-size GPS chip inserted into Garmin units. He's also issued new paper fishing maps (three editions covering different parts of the state, at $15 each), through King of Prussia-based Franklin Maps.

On a demonstration, Gogal piloted me toward bass territory on the Schuylkill, trout in the Wissahickon and Chester Creeks, channel catfish off Flat Rock Dam and the Frankford Arsenal. It's surprising, he said, how fish have recovered close to, even in, the big city and its sprawled suburbs.

Gogal says the partners are directing five percent of proceeds to the state fish commission's Conservation Acquisition Partnership, which buys land for public stream and pond access: "A lot of fishermen feel they ought to give something back."
Posted by Joseph N. DiStefano @ 4:07 PM  Permalink | 1 comment
Comments   
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 7:05 PM, 02/16/2011
    pretty nice, they should make it work on cell phones
    — phillyguy36


1 comments
About Joseph N. DiStefano
Joseph N. DiStefano writes this blog to feed his PhillyDeals column in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Joe has been a member of Bloomberg LP’s New York Finance Team, wrote the book “Comcasted,” taught writing at St. Joseph’s University, and studied economics and history at Penn. Reach Joe at 215-854-5194 and JoeD@phillynews.com
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