Family-owned bait and tackle stores, once full of worms and wisdom, have nearly disappeared in Philadelphia

Photographs of people holding fish have faded, like memories, just beyond the front door of Brinkman’s Bait & Tackle Shop.

Back in the day, between World War II and the new millennium, getting a Polaroid pinned to the wall of your local bait and tackle shop was a high honor. At this Northeast Philadelphia shop, on the corner of State Road and Linden Avenue since 1961, there was a picture of a woman kissing a largemouth bass, two guys hoisting a bluefish in front of a city rowhouse, and some guys chomping cigars in bloody butcher’s coats about to filet a fat striper.

“We had a guy bring in a tuna that barely fit through the door. There was the carp guy who caught a piranha in Philly. We had the state record crappie weighed in there, but it’s been broken a few times since. There’s too many to remember,” said Bill Brinkman, who sold the shop in 2018. “A lot of those folks in those pictures are long gone.”

A few hundred more photos lined the walls at Brinkman’s but most customers hurried past them Saturday morning, their pockets full of cash, hoping to get a deal on the shop’s last day after 62 years.

“I’m prepared to give you $400 now for the line spooler,” fisherman Max Rubinstein, 31, told a woman at the counter.

Saturday’s “cash n carry” was meant to clear Brinkman’s out for good — every hook, hot-pink worm, and heavy lead jig. Owner Mike Reynolds, a longtime fisherman who had also owned a shop in Morrisville, Bucks County, died on May 6. The family, according to the store’s Facebook page, has decided not to keep Brinkman’s open and declined to comment Saturday amid the flurry of transactions.

Brinkman’s closure leaves one family-owned bait & tackle shop left in Philadelphia, a city with two major rivers and a spiderweb of adjoining creeks, waterways where the young and old of every race spend weekends sitting on buckets and chairs, soaking worms and waiting for a tug on their fishing pole. According to the Pennsylvania Fish & Boat Commissions, there were 13,476 fishing licenses sold to people with a Philadelphia address in 2022.

“I just say I’m going out to enjoy myself, not to fish,” said Corey Bryant, a Northeast Philadelphia resident waiting in line Saturday morning at Brinkman’s. “I don’t really care what kind of fish I catch.”

Like the folks in those decades-old old photos, most small bait & tackle stores in the greater Philadelphia region are also long gone, supplanted by internet deals, large, sporting goods chains, and megastores like Bass Pro Shops and Cabela’s. The few dozen men and women in line at Brinkman’s on Saturday sipped from Wawa and Dunkin’ Donuts cups, rattling off names of shuttered stores on both sides of the river: Bob’s, Joe’s, Jay’s, Dee’s, Taylor’s, Busnardo’s, Stratton’s, Ed’s, Edelman’s, Fish-n-Fur, Creek Keepers, to name a few.

“A lot of the old-time shops, they just ran out of time. Their owners grew old or died, and the kids don’t want to keep it going,” Brinkman, 62, said via phone from his cabin in Wayne County. “We were still doing well when we sold, but it was time.”

There’s no easy way to track the number of bait and tackle shops left in the region. Many still thrive at the Jersey Shore’s barrier islands, where it’s not so easy to build a Walmart. In Pennsylvania, the Fish & Boat Commission keeps track of the number of stores where hobbyists can purchase an official fishing license. Today, there’s 700 license agents in the state. In 1991, there were 1,200. Philadelphia has seven agents, four of them being Walmarts. One is an auto tag store.

Another agent, Sportmaster Bait and Tackle, on Ditman Street by the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge, is the last bait and tackle shop left in the city.

“We don’t like to see any store close. It’s a tough game to be in, for sure, but you get something here you don’t get at the big store,” said Brady Riley, 26, whose parents own Sportmaster. “Us young guys here at the store are always out fishing and we can answer a ton of questions. We have the experience. "

While no one was seeking out photos at Brinkman’s on Saturday, fisherman and journalist Joe Cermele, of Yardley, was gifted a box of Polaroids from Bill Brinkman years ago. Cermele, who hosts the Cut & Retie fishing podcast, cherishes the photos as much as the gear and occasionally shares them on his Instagram page. He says something is lost when a small shop like Brinkman’s closes.

“There’s the sights and a certain smell and the sound of the bubblers keeping the bait alive,” Cermele, 40, said. “You lose a certain charisma and you definitely lose the conversations. It’s really a downer to see it go.”

Brinkman’s is for sale for $649,000 and, according to the listing, could be converted into retail, “luxury town houses,” or an apartment building with views of the Delaware River. A buyer could forge ahead with bait and tackle too, the listing noted. While the merchandise was disappearing from the shelves, even the ceiling, Reynolds’s wife decided to keep the line spooler, for now, in case a buyer decides to bite on the city’s fishermen, instead of apartments.