Beach limited fishing; ‘we’re not in the practice of catching beach-goers’
By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff
OCEAN CITY – What good is a 635-foot-long fishing pier, for fishing, if you look down from the end of it just to see people strolling by in a foot of water?
That was the long and short of it as the Ocean City Fishing Club (OCFC) decided it was time to extend the 14th Street Fishing Pier to nearly 750 feet, a $500,000 project conceived five years ago that died, was brought back to life, and is finally coming to fruition by the middle of this March.
“It’s been obvious in recent years that beach replenishment has caused the pier to be only fishable for a few hours on each side of high tide,” club publicity chairman Greg Borak said. “At low tide it’s not uncommon to look down from the end of the pier and see people strolling by on the sand. We’re not in the practice of catching beach-goers.
“We thought if things progress and fishing gets worse and more limited, it’s probably going to result in a decrease in membership and we’d probably be on the road to extinction as a fishing club,” Borak said.
Former club president Frank Pizzutilla brought the project back to life and has continued to chair the committee overseeing the extension. He said a study showed at mean low tide, there was only a foot of water at the end of the pier and beach-goers were walking in front of it. When there was water, it was still so shallow there were swimmers alongside the pier.
“We had to tell our fishermen, ‘don’t fish on the sides of the pier because there are swimmers there,’” Pizzutilla said. “We had to fish the outer end of the pier. It started to become dangerous with all the people walking through, walking by and walking around the pier.”
Current President Joe Hughes said club rules also prohibit anglers from casting out at the end of the pier when people are walking or swimming in front of it, further diminishing the use.
Hughes said the roughly 220 to 230 members were getting “fed up” with the fact they couldn’t fish, often for hours on either side of the low tides.
Some of the club members decided it was easier to surf fish from the beach because they could be closer to the water.
Pizzutilla said a committee was formed five years ago, headed by someone in the pier-building business who was going to advise the club on how to proceed, but he had a stroke and “everything fell apart at that point.”
When he took over the presidency, he resurrected the idea. That meant getting support from the members because the project was going to cost $500,000.
Pizzutilla and Hughes were both impressed because 94 percent of the membership voted in favor of extending the pier.
“It was pretty amazing,” Hughes said. “We have a lot of older members who don’t have a chance to get out there and they were on board with it. You would think that older members who don’t get a lot of time to get out there would either abstain or just say no, but they’re looking at the future, also for the club itself to maintain it and keep fishing. At some point, we would have been sitting on complete sand.
“We were pretty excited when we got that kind of response from the membership,” he added.
They explained the money for the project came through donations, including some members who really stepped up, fundraising and OCFC funds.
After getting the approval of the membership, the next step was to get approval for the project from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for adding another 113.4 feet to the end of the existing pier, a process that took more than a year. The club hired Hyland Design Group of Ocean City to do all the environmental work and the design work. “There was all kinds of red tape involved,” Pizzutilla said. The environmental permits went back to a deed issued back in 1898.
After that it was time to put the project out to bid and hire a firm – Marine Maintenance and Construction of Clayton. Work began in December and was scheduled to be done by March 1, though weather has pushed back the completion date to mid-March.
The extension is 113.4 feet, Pizzutilla said, including 84 feet of walkway that had been completed and another rectangular box extending another 29 feet that is 50 feet wide, forming a T-shape at the end, like the existing pier.
The former president said the study that showed one foot of water at dead low tide at the end of the 635-foot existing pier shows the club will have 11 feet of water at the same periods at the end of the extended pier that will be almost 750 long. They’re not sure if they will actually have that depth of water during low tide because they can’t control beach replenishment and sand movement, but it will be a far cry from past conditions.
He and Hughes said that will allow many more fishermen and women to cast out at one time. Not only will they be able to fish the end of the pier, but they’ll also be able to use the sides as well they won’t look down on the beach, strollers walking by, or swimmers.
“The extension will allow us to fish all day and we won’t have to worry about swimmers,” Pizzutilla said. “We’ll be away from the beach. There will be a lot of positives there.”
“What I look forward to most is I believe we’re going to get a lot more members out there fishing on a continual basis,” Hughes said. “It’s going to allow us to open up for more members fishing at one time. With the extension, not only will you be able to fish on the outer platform, you’ll be able to fish along the sides, the walkway going out there.
“That’s what I really look for,” he added. “Those are some of the best times out there when you walk out and there are men and women out there fishing and you trade some stories. It’s really nice when they’re out there.”
Open house not scheduled
The OCFC has not scheduled any open houses for this summer, a practice begun in 2013 for the club’s centennial anniversary. The two open houses would draw nearly a thousand people each in the summer, raising money and food donations for the Ocean City Food Cupboard.
“Once they’re out there,” Hughes said of visitors during the open house, “they don’t want to leave. They get mesmerized out there. They see the water. It’s a different experience being out there.”
There remain concerns about COVID-19 so the club hasn’t put open houses for the new, extended pier on the schedule for this summer, but they are pretty assured there will be open houses in 2022.
The pandemic also has greatly limited the number of members fishing because of social distancing requirements.
View the construction
There is a video cam on the fishing pier looking out over the construction. To see the work going on there, go online to ocnj.tv and find the cam for the 14th Street Fishing Pier.
