In 2007 I spent a day on the water with fishing fanatic Patrick Jenkinson and his son, Wyatt, then 9 years old (Chapter 12 in The Big One). As a fourth-grader, Wyatt’s entries went on the Vineyard derby’s junior leaderboard, but he took the competition as seriously as anyone. The day I met him, he had a 54-pound, first-place junior grand slam going — the heaviest combined weight of a striper, bluefish, bonito and false albacore. When he spotted a rival cruising the same waters nearby, he looked at me and said, “He’s our archenemy.”

Wyatt is still a junior, but the bonito he caught Monday morning is a major-leaguer. At 9.71 pounds, it launched him to the top of the main leaderboard, ahead of everybody — kids, flyrodders, grizzled veterans, rich charter-boat anglers.

For now at least, the 11-year-old is, in derby parlance, a Grand Leader.

At school Tuesday, Wyatt basked in the attention. “I told a lot of teachers,” he said. “They were amazed.”

Now comes the stomach-churning. If his fish holds on through Saturday night, he’ll have a one-in-four shot at the grand-prize Chevy Silverado. If lightning strikes (No Whammies!), he’d have to wait a little while longer to drive the truck, of course, but in the meantime he could get used to that cherished Martha’s Vineyard honorific, “Derby Champion.”

His superstitious dad — frankly, I’m shocked he picked up the phone to talk about the fish with me — isn’t doing much to help his nerves. Patrick is either preparing him for the worst sort of heartbreak, or else doing anything he can to keep from jinxing the kid. “I told him, ‘You’re going to get beat. It’s gonna happen. There are bigger fish out there. A nine pounder is not going to win this year,’” he said, wishing and hoping and dreaming that he’s completely and totally wrong. Working in their favor is the weather forecast. Big winds are called for as the derby heads into its final four days.

The Jenkinsons have been dialed in on the bonito this fall. Patrick led in the first week with an eight pounder, and he has two other daily winners to his name. One came on “Bonito Saturday” and got him a $500 jackpot.

On Monday school was out for Columbus Day, so they headed out at 7:30 a.m. in a stiff north wind. Nobody else was on the water as they got into position and cast their lines out. The way the Jenkinsons do it, Wyatt gets to fight the first fish, then they alternate. But the first one was a little bluefish, so father told son they would start taking turns after Wyatt caught a bonito, and the kid ended up with the rod when the next fish hit.

“It was a heck of a fight,” Patrick said. The first run sent the bonito right past the boat and they got a good look at it. “It was like, ‘Oh my god, I haven’t seen a big one like this in a long time.’ I says ‘This is a real one.’” He went for the net and it turned into a minor adventure. Patrick got the bonito halfway into the webbing but it shot back out and under the motor. A few hair-raising seconds later they had it on deck.

They marveled about the fish for a moment. Then, reflexively, they started talking about Wendy, Patrick’s wife and Wyatt’s mom, who died last year after a year-long fight with brain cancer. Fish like this inspire thoughts of the heavens.

“What else do we think about when something good happens, or something funny happens?” Patrick explained. “You know she was with us. It was an unbelievable moment. It was just a nice moment.”

Patrick has been fishing the derby forever. As a kid he won the junior ranks twice. As an adult he’s won enough daily pins to cover 10 hats, and he’s taken first place in the boat grand slam standings — a feat that earns lasting respect in hardcore fishing circles.

He knows better than to bank on Wyatt’s bonito. He knows how tough it is to finish a Grand Leader: He’s never even done it himself.

But juniors have been crashing the main leaderboard regularly in recent years. Molly Fischer, then 12 years old, finished atop the boat bass division with a 49-pounder in 2005. Two years later Chris Morris, an eighth-grader, caught the big bluefish, an 11-pounder, and went home with the grand-prize boat.

They ring the final bell on the derby Saturday night at 10. It can’t come soon enough for Wyatt.

“It’s probably going to be the longest week on my life.”

(In the meantime, he might consider reserving his derby badge number for the foreseeable future. Coop, the Edgartown tackle shop owner, set aside a special one for Wyatt this fall: 1234. Derby anglers are nothing if not superstitious, and that number may have mojo.)

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.)