The last of the Jersey Shore fishing piers

VENTNOR, N.J. - 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.

No one's building new fishing piers. But with the loss of Seaside Heights' fishing pier to Superstorm Sandy and Wildwood Crest's to an ever-widening beach, there are only four piers left that jut out over the Atlantic Ocean, two in Atlantic County and two in Cape May County.

The fishing clubs that run those ocean piers are faced with dilemmas about their future. They can spend a fortune extending them farther out into the ocean and remain a viable fishing club or limit their fishing to high tide when there's enough water beneath them, or possibly go the way of the Wildwood Crest Fishing Club's pier, which was taken over by the borough and now operates as a public pier, marooned in a desert of sand far from the surf.

Wildwood Crest Commissioner Don Cabrera said not everyone felt the pier should be saved after the fishing club went defunct and the beach continued to grow, leaving the pier hundreds of feet from the water. Some thought it should be knocked down, but Cabrera felt the pier set the city apart and he helped secure the money to preserve it and make it publicly accessible.

"As soon as you see that pier, you know you're in Wildwood Crest," he said. "It's an icon. It's history."

Many of the piers, including those in Margate, Ocean City and Ventnor belong to private fishing clubs with limited memberships closed to the general public. Guests can fish with members, but fishermen eager to become members often have to wait years to get in.

Once they're in the club, though, they're part of a mystique that's uniquely Shore.

"It took me five years to get in, 25 years ago. Right now, we have a [short] wait," said Augie Conte, president of the Ocean City Fishing Club. "We have two open houses every year, and we have 700 people show up."

The Ocean City Fishing Club is the oldest continuously operating club of its kind in the country. Its small clubhouse by the boardwalk is filled with varnished, wooden lockers passed down through seniority, old tournament trophies pitted by the salty air and a cache of fishing rods hanging from the ceiling.

The club's 2015 yearbook is 68 pages long and, for $50 a year, the club provides members with all the bloodworms they need in a fridge out by the ocean. It has a busy calendar of social events, including this week's Fourth of July party and a "Ladies Social," but, with its 630-foot pier, it remains a fishing club above all else.

"Going out," Frank Pizzutilla, 74, yelled as he cast out a rig with worms earlier this week.

Pizzutilla, a retired teacher and the club's second vice president, said members are considering an extension of the pier, which is difficult to fish during low tide as beaches shift and get replenished with sand by the federal government.

"We used to fish back here. Now we're fishing up front," he said. "We could probably afford to go longer but it's probably a lot of red tape. It's something we've been kicking around."

Ventnor's fishing pier is unique because it has memberships, day rates for the public and nonfishing rates for people who just want to take in the view. At 1,000 feet, it is the longest of any of the state's ocean piers. It also has Kanter, who can tell stories with the best of them, even if he's not the best fisherman.

Kanter said his fellow piermaster, Mike Hirchak, is the expert angler, but that he's more personable, even though many members tell him how much they miss "Piermaster Patty."

Members have keys to the pier, but Kanter, a Ventnor native, arrives at the fishing shed/office about a minute past 8 a.m. to collect fees, answer the phones and make everyone laugh.

"They come in and sit here and start talking if it's raining," said Kanter, a longtime casino worker. "Some of them are miserable. They don't want to talk to you. Some of them are happy."

"Hey, Louie," a man said, walking past the shed with a cart of fishing gear.

"You go out there and give it a blessing, Father Frank," Kanter responded.

Outside, farther up the pier, Ken "Kenny the Cop" Smith is working his rig along the pier's south side, with Margate's shorter pier off in the distance. He retired from the Atlantic City Police Department and gives the fish until noon to start biting before he calls it quits.

"Kenny's one of the friendlier guys out here," Kanter said with a hint of sarcacsm as he walked past.

"Don't listen to him," Smith shot back.

Joe DiStefano, 72, was down with his grandson, Anthony, 12, and his brother, Fred, who was sleeping in a chair. His mother has a house in Ventnor and he drives down a few times every week from Broomall. Together, the crew caught a few kingfish, which are small but feisty, and a few tiny sharks that no one ever keeps unless they need flounder bait.

"See, they don't have teeth," DiStefano said, sticking his finger in the shark's mouth. "They have beautiful eyes, though."

Out on the pier, you'll learn that catching a cownose ray is like hooking a train. If you're not careful, or if you're asleep like Fred DiStefano, a cownose ray will whip your rod right over the railing and into the sea.

The piers offer close-up views of nature: ospreys fishing in the surf, dolphins cruising past the breakers. Kanter will lend you binoculars if you need the make and model of a specific bikini down on the beach.

Frank Cavallaro, 65, was born and raised in South Philly and can give you the blow-by-blow of what it's like to lose a $600 pair of prescription Ray-Bans over the railing. Now he wears cheap ones. His recent stomach surgery means he can't fish, but he was still out there, on the pier, in Ventnor.

"I just come out to help anyone who needs it," he said.

Kenny Chu, 65, didn't need any help. He's the kind of fisherman you watch out of the corner of your eye to see what you're doing wrong.

"Sometimes I catch 10 kingfish," Chu said as he took the hook out of a shark's mouth in a split-second and threw it back.

In all, no more than 10 fishermen were on Ventnor pier this weekday morning, most of them regulars, older men who'd learned a few things and a young one soaking in decades of wisdom you can't find in an arcade or boardwalk funhouse.

DiStefano's grandson had bloodworm guts and fish scales on his hands and sweatpants. That's a good combo on any fishing pier.

Father Frank Gramigna, 78, said he retired from the Camden Diocese, which means he can fish every day. He sat on a bench, facing north, smiling toward a postcard view of Atlantic City as waves rolled onto the beach and surfers bobbed in the swells.

Father Frank kept a finger on the line but nothing was biting. He uttered a saying any fisherman could take home.

"I just like to be out here," Gramigna said. "I call it relaxation, interrupted by a fish every now and then."