If you’re on Martha’s Vineyard with little kids during the second Sunday of the annual fishing derby, set your alarm to go off before dawn and head to Oak Bluffs for a look at the next generation of addicted anglers. At 6 a.m. sharp, the youngsters swarm the steamship dock in hopes of catching a fish. At the Kids Derby, any fish will do.
It’s a scene worthy of a multimedia presentation, so here goes.
First, the video:
Fun, right? But just as the real derby has been known to prompt major disputes among hardcore competitors as they vie for prizes and fame, one year a fight actually broke out on Kids Day. As usual, Nelson Sigelman from The Martha’s Vineyard Times had the story.
Finally, here’s a little of what I wrote about the 2007 Kids Derby in The Big One:
Late one Saturday night during the derby, I climbed into Cooper Gilkes’s truck and rode with him and his brother in-law into Edgartown. They had spent all day out on a boat, and he walked into the crowded weigh station holding a 33-pound bass by its bloodied gill plate. Cooper is a legend in the island’s outdoor community, a guy who has caught his fish and made a life of passing on what he knows. I had heard story after story about the man’s sporting prowess. “He’s like God as far as stripers go,” one fisherman told me. As we approached the weighmaster, it felt like walking with a star athlete through a mass of fans onto the playing field. People seemed to take special notice when Coop arrived with a fish.
“Look at that one,” a woman said.
“Nice fish, Coop,” somebody called out from behind the rope line.
Like a ballplayer grown accustomed to fan appreciation, he didn’t acknowledge the comment. Instead, he went straight back to the truck. He was exhausted but he had more work to do. Every year in the middle of September, Coop runs the derby’s one-day fishing contest for kids. Though it takes place in the midst of the main tournament, it’s a stand-alone event. At six the next morning, a few hundred kids would show up with their parents on the steamship wharf in Oak Bluffs for two hours of fishing before the boats started to run. The kid’s day rules are simple: longest fish wins. It can be a little baitfish, like a scup, or an eel, or a sea bass, or even a bonito. Coop supplies the bait, so after we left the weigh station we went out to a pond and seined enough silversides to fill a cooler four inches deep. The next morning, the kids caught a mess of scup. Donald O’Shaughnessy Jr., eight years old, caught the winner—it measured a bit over fourteen inches—and went home with a trophy scup mounted by Janet Messineo. “He’s been fishing hard since he was four,” said his dad, Donald Sr. “He’s nuts. He’ll have a charter boat by the time he’s eighteen.” Nelson Sigelman asked the boy if he’d share his secret of success. “Never,” came the reply. Everybody laughed as the O’Shaughnessys made their way back to their car. “Okay,” father said to son, “let’s go win the other derby.”
As I thought more about those weeks I spent on the island, it struck me that the derby could never be transported to a different place. Only on the Vineyard could a fishing contest become something more than a bunch of fishermen flogging the water, another time slot on ESPN2’s weekend schedule. Its people are clinging to their island’s history and its status as a place apart, even if they can’t help but worry that their grasp is slipping. Six decades is a long time, though, and the derby has a momentum that’s not likely to be slowed anytime soon. For some people, it’s one of the few things that haven’t changed about the island. Gazette writer Mark Alan Lovewell says the tournament has grown into something akin to a historic building, like the Tabernacle in Oak Bluffs or Edgartown’s Old Whaling Church. It is an institution not to be trifled with. It connects past and present on an island where the new is relentlessly erasing the old. “I just think we’re really lucky that the fish are still in the ocean,” he says, “that the stories still get told, that the memories of what this island is about is still getting told. That makes the derby even more important.”
It’s one long Vineyard tale that stretches as far as the mind can see in both directions, from the first Wampanoag bone-hook anglers of antiquity to the kids who tried their luck on the Oak Bluffs wharf and who, in a few years, will no doubt stride into the weigh station gripping winners by the gills—that next generation of ordinary islanders mainlining the sea and taking their measure by it.
(Thanks again to the derby committee and Mike Laptew for sharing this video.)
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Dave: By way of introduction, I am retired but I was in the fishing tackle business for 43 yrs first as a Mfg. Rep then as CEO of American Tackle Ltd. Maybe our paths crossed somewhere along the line. I am on page 184 of the Big One and find it very enjoyable to read. I know many of the people you have mentioned. I am sure some of the boat fishermen have used a lure called the “Hoochie”which I designed and marketed years ago. It was very popular on the Cape for stripers & blues. I am wondering if you came across any stories about an old customer of mine, Bill Nolan by name. Bill was a wagon jobber out of Norwell, Mass who fished the derby for many years. I know he spent a lot of time on the Vineyard during the derby. He also fished from a boat charter owned by Capt. Frank Sabatowski. Mostly at the Sow & Pigs off Cuttyhunk. At any rate, I enjoyed your book & hope you write more about some of the famous fishing Tournaments. I am sure there is plenty to write about.
Regards,
Joseph Meehan
I didn’t come across any stories about Bill, but unless he was fishing the derby in 2007, I probably wouldn’t have. Glad you’re enjoying the book.
Dave