The weather is playing havoc on the final days of the derby, which ends Saturday at 10 p.m.: check out the Vineyard Gazette piece in today’s paper.
Striper Steve Pietruska’s iced-down bluefish is generating some chatter (see here and here), though nothing like the uproar over the leadbellied 57-pounder two years ago.
Meanwhile, as Wyatt Jenkinson bites his nails over his first-place boat bonito, I’m reminded of a story I heard this summer about the 2007 boat bonito race. Islander Geoff Codding won his second consecutive derby that year with a 9.14-pound bonito caught from his friend Lev Wlodyka’s boat in September. It was a smallish first-place fish, and Geoff never felt entirely secure that it would hold up. He knew better: He’d finished in second place six times over the past few years.
As it turned out, it could’ve happened again. Somebody did get a bigger fish. If only she’d registered for the derby.
Krista Martinko violated the cardinal rule of fishing Martha’s Vineyard in the fall. If you’re going to wet a line, get a derby button. The 64-year history of the tournament is choked with would-be winners who didn’t shell out a few bucks just in case they caught a big one. (See page 253 of The Big One for the ultimate beatdown: Harry Beach and his couldabeen derby record striper.)
Krista and her husband David, who are from Maryland, have been coming up for the derby most of this decade. In 2007, they were out with charter captain Kurt Freund when Krista brought in a nice bonito that topped 10 pounds on the Boga Grip.
“Kurt’s mouth dropped,” Krista recalled, “and he said ‘Please, PLEASE say you have a pin!’”
Her husband had one; she didn’t. It wasn’t until she went to Edgartown that night to weigh in her husband’s fish that she realized how big a mistake she’d made. She overheard a couple of islanders talking. “You hear about some girl who landed a 10.5-pound bone today? She’s not even entered in the derby!”
“I had to smile,” she said. “I had made the local chatter.”
Small consolation, if you ask me.
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