At Cape Fear Marine and Tackle near Carolina Beach, such advice is free, along with tips on which baits and lures to use. There's also advice for calling on the supernatural during those tough times when the fish seem to have disappeared.
Anglers are nothing if not a superstitious lot.
Shop owner Barry Bernstein asked two customers if they had fishing superstitions. They laughed uneasily and would not look him in the eye. Making their purchases -- and hiding their eyes beneath their cap bills -- they slunk through the door. Bernstein smiled at counter man Clarence Chahoc, who smiled back.
"If you ask anyone if they have superstitions they will usually say, 'No' from the git-go," said Bernstein, 63. "Everyone knows it's even bad luck to reveal your superstitions.
"But if you really dig at them or go fishing with them, the truth will always come out. Every fisherman is superstitious about something."
Even Bernstein.
But he, along with Chahoc, on a recent day was willing to share a few of the superstitions he has heard.
No photos, please
For years, Bernstein said, he would not allow a camera on his boat.
"Fish are camera shy," the shop owner said. "If you take a camera aboard, you'll never catch a fish worth taking a picture of."
But he confided he now carries a digital camera. He prefers a photos of fish at sea over shots at the dock, and he has captured enough trophy fish that he can relegate his fish-photo phobia to no more than an uneasy feeling each time he stows a camera in his tackle bag.
"Maybe it was the switch from a film camera to a digital camera," Chahoc said. "Fish are finicky about things like that."
Wearable superstition
Chahoc admits to his own superstition.
"Good luck charms are common to every angler," Chahoc, 53, said. "I don't usually wear hats, except I have an old, beat-up white one I wear when I go fishing. I always seem to catch more fish when I'm wearing it than when I'm not. I also have a lure that's so lucky I don't even like to fish with it."
The problem with the lure is that it no longer is made. If a fish bites through the line, the Beaver Bait Co. lure will be gone and will be almost impossible to replace. It's a jerk bait similar to a current production Got-Cha lure that anglers cast to schooling fish such as Spanish mackerel and bluefish.
"I only have three of them left," Chahoc said. "They have a little rounder head than the current types and have cadmium hooks instead of chrome-plated or gold-plated hooks.
"I catch a lot of fish on other lures when I go fishing from the piers. But I just don't think I catch as many fish as with those lucky old lures."
Gone bananas
Bernstein reviewed a passel of scenarios he had heard over his many years behind a tackle counter and on the water.
"Holding your mouth right, spitting on your bait, spraying WD-40 on the bait, washing your hands after putting on sunscreen, not washing your hands after cutting your bait and before baiting a hook are all common superstitions," he said. "But the most persistent superstition is the one about bananas. If you even say the word 'banana' on some boats, you will get hog-tied and tossed overboard."
Anyone heading to the coast for a charter trip or a trip with a beach-town buddy is well-advised to avoid eating a banana within a day or two of heading out, and actually bringing one aboard is the ultimate sin to be committed in all of fishing.
No one seems to know for certain where the idea that a bringing a banana aboard a boat brings bad luck. But there are theories.
"I've heard the reason for the banana superstition is that the fastest sailing ships used to carry bananas from the tropics to U.S. ports along the East Coast to land the bananas before they could spoil," Chahoc said. "The banana boats were so fast that fishermen never caught anything while trolling for fish from them, and that's where the superstition got started."
More bananas
Another theory is that bananas carried aboard slave ships fermented and gave off methane gas, which would be trapped below deck. Anyone in the hold, including cargoes of imprisoned humanity, would succumb to the poisoned air, and anyone trying to climb down into the hold to help them also would be a candidate for a sailcloth-and-chain sleeping bag for that final resting place on the bottom of the ocean. Giving credence to that theory may be similar tragedies in farm manure digesters that provide methane gas for powering farm heating facilities and equipment.
A possibly more plausible theory is that a species of spider with a lethal bite likes to hide in bunches of bananas. Crewmen suddenly dying of spider bites after bananas are brought aboard certainly would be considered a bad omen resulting in the cargo being tossed into the sea. It could have been more than spiders.
"Back in the old days, it wasn't unusual for spiders, scorpions and snakes to hide in banana bunches," said David Stephan, an extension specialist in the N.C. State Entomology Department. "Tarantulas, being the largest, would be the easiest to notice."
Stephan said most species of tarantulas and scorpions are not lethal but that a bite or sting will provide "a painful but not dangerous experience." He also said the snakes found could be small boa constrictors, which are tree climbers that can administer a nasty bite but not a lethal one.
One remarkable story has it that Fruit of the Loom underwear once had a banana along with the other fruits in the logo on the waistband label. An executive of the company learned of the superstition while on an offshore fishing trip. The fish were in a particularly uncooperative mood, so he stripped off his unmentionables. After that, he considered the banana ban a true taboo, and the banana was banished from the label.
This tale, however, may be more lore than fact.
"As far as I know, we've never had a banana on the logo, and I've been here for 35 years," said Teresa Sikes, a consumer services representative for Fruit of the Loom.
And just as the bananas on the Fruit of the Loom label might never have existed, the bad luck might not have, either.
"I know anglers who've eaten bananas and caught plenty of fish and have heard of anglers trolling with banana peels and catching fish on a dare," Chahoc said. "But why press your luck?
"You might peel a banana, drop the peel on the deck and then step on it. If you slip and break your neck, it will only confirm the superstition.
"The superstition has been around ever since anyone can remember, and that would certainly reinforce it for at least another century or two."
Even the wind
Some superstition may be based on fact, including two mentioned by Chahoc: that yellow butterflies are good luck and that an east wind is bad luck.
"When the yellow butterflies are here, the spots are here," he said. "When they leave, the spots leave."
That fall movement by the cloudless sulphur butterfly [Phoebis sennae] makes sense to Chahoc.
"The yellow butterflies are seen migrating far out into the ocean," he said, "and it's not a stretch to think that the same temperatures or time of year that compels spots to migrate also makes the butterflies migrate."
Stephan backs that theory, but noted that the butterflies don't migrate long distances.
"In some years, they build up in huge numbers," Stephan said. "Butterflies may respond to the same changes in barometric pressure, temperature and weather changes just like fish. The coastline also may act as a barrier, concentrating the insects and making them more noticeable to people at that time of the year."
The east-wind theory also appears to hold truths from nature and science.
"Around Carolina Beach, an east wind makes it hard to get offshore because all the inlets face east, and that may be a reason for that superstition," Chahoc said. "It could also be that an east wind brings a change in barometric pressure or something else happens that shuts the fish down because the superstition persists all along the Eastern Seaboard.
"All I know is that there are a lot of fishermen who won't fish when the wind is blowing from the east. The saying goes, 'Wind from the east, fish bite the least. Wind from the west, fishing's the best.' Most of the time, I think it's true, but I've also seen some nice fish caught when the wind's from a direction that's supposed to be wrong."
And that may be the most telling point of all. Forget bananas, bugs, lucky lures and the like. Sometimes, it's better to be lucky than good.