The Big Dance: Fishing the Martha’s Vineyard Derby

If you’re lucky enough to fish the Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby, it will be with you for the rest of your life. My friend Kevin, who’s been fishing this Derby for more than ten years, calls this yearly event “The Big Dance.” It’s an experience that you’ll never forget and should be on every bass hound’s bucket list. I’ve seen the most beautiful sunsets I’ve ever witnessed, throwing plugs in the surf on South Beach in Katama. I’ve met fishermen from England at 3 a.m., and stood side by side slinging eels in the surf, watching shooting stars on a beach in Aquinnah. Seven guys who fly all the way across the Atlantic Ocean every year to fish the Derby. It’s that special. My God, I thought. I live just north of Boston and I only started fishing this a few years ago. If I’d only known.

On Monday, October 8, 2012, I woke up at 4:30 a.m. in the Oak Bluffs house that my buddy Kevin rents every year. I splashed some cold water in my face, hopped in my truck, and headed for the little diner in Edgartown right next to the weigh-in station, as I did almost every morning while fishing the Vineyard Derby. At the Dock Street Coffee shop, I had my usual: two eggs, over easy, side of bacon, grilled English and a black coffee. I had no idea this was going to be a day that I’d have nightmares about for the rest of my days in the surf.

I pulled up to the parking spaces at Edgartown Light just before 6. The water was calm, and surprisingly the regular crowd of albie fishermen, which numbered anywhere from 15 to 30 at any given sunrise, was absent. I walked down the wooden planks to the sand, and then out to the light house.

A group of New York guys had the point, five surf rods in spikes. I’d met them the day before while chunking on the beach in Edgartown. Right off the bat, we were thick as thieves, and I’d end up fishing for three more days with these great guys.

My buddy Kevin was back at the house laid up with a sore Achilles tendon from a long walk slinging eels all night. As I was walking toward the point along the surf line, 15 yards to my right in the harbor, a big school of pogies frantically erupted on the calm surface, clearly under assault from predators below. Out of nowhere, this huge school surfaced, their fins looking like reeds in a pond sticking straight up out of the water, just sitting in a tight bunch while big swirls erupted all along the edges of them. There were big fish feeding on them, I thought. Thank God, I said to myself, I had a snag hook in my back pack and quickly had 10 fresh pogies on the sand. I ended up emptying the gear from my backpack and filling it with pogies. This turned out to be a nightmare to clean the next day, but it was worth it at the time!

Those fish turned out to be big blues harassing the school, as I quickly found out while snagging and dragging. I’d snag a pogy, bring him a couple cranks outside the school, and BAM! I’d reel in a half of a pogy with a perfect half-moon chomp. Later on that day the pogies disappeared from the harbor and showed back up about 50 yards off the beach. I’d snag a pogy, reel it in about five cranks of the reel, hold it just outside of the school again, and again, every time get bit clean in half by gorilla blues.

As the sun was dipping below the horizon on that, it happened. I had my 12-foot Tsunami Trophy surf rod in a sand spike with a Shimano Baitrunner 6000D reel loaded with 25-pound-test mono (which I’ll never use again) and a whole fresh pogy on a 8/0 Gamakatsu.

My rod slammed over as I was talking to the New York guys, then popped back up straight as I ran over to it. I picked it up, reeled the slack, and felt for a moment. Something was still there, bumping it. The line suddenly jerked out and started going. I followed it down with the rod, and then SLAM! I Set the hook and leaned back into this fish. The rod bent over and this thing started steadily peeling line out. My first thought was, this is the winning striper. If I get this in, I’m going to win the Striper Division. With only a week left, the largest bass weighed in so far was 37 pounds from the boat and 30 from the surf. I’ve caught fish over 40 pounds from both the surf and the boat, and knew instantly that this was no 30…and this was no 40. There was just steady, powerful pulling. The fish was taking line steadily and at a good clip down the beach, angling toward open ocean. I had two football fields worth of line on the reel, so I let her go, remembering the words of the legendary Billy the Greek, “On an open beach with a big bass, loosen the drag, where’s she going to go? Where’s she going to go?”

I was fighting the biggest fish I’d ever hooked in my 30 years of striped bass fishing, so nothing else mattered. I was walking down the beach, my rod bent over, and I tried cupping the spool lightly, but it quickly would get to the breaking point. So I kept walking, gently thumbing the spool, line steadily peeling out. “Im going to get spooled,” I thought. I said it aloud a few times. One other guy was walking with me, having left his rod behind to see this fish. A couple who were taking pictures of the lighthouse were also walking behind me, now suddenly interested.

At this point I was about 100 yards down the beach when I said aloud again, “This fish is going to spool me!” I looked at my reel and started to see the gold of the spool. Panic. When I had about 10 wraps left, I locked down the drag. I held the rod high, tried to turn and stop this fish, but with the line at the breaking point, I bent with the rod and bang, the line went slack.

Heartbreak.

If you’ve lost a big fish, you know the feeling. I sat down on the sand with my rod in my hands, looking at the reel with no line on it, shell shocked. I put my head in my hands and sat alone on the sand for 10 full minutes. I walked back to my other rod and got a pat on the back from every guy on that beach. One guy told me that he’d lived on Chappaquiddick all his life and never seen anything like it. Another guy said, “Don’t beat yourself up too much about it; chances are that was a big ray or a shark.”

“Do guys really hook rays around here?” I asked.

“No, not really,” he said.

A few days ago, I was reading the account of Al McReynolds, the man who once held the striper world record with a 78-pound bass taken on a jetty in Atlantic City in September of 1982. His account sounded eerily similar to my experience—that long, steady run—and he was almost spooled, except that he stopped his fish when he saw the silver of his spool. Did I have a bass on that went 70-plus? One of those big stripers that follows the blues and pogies around for easy meals? Or was it a big ray or a brown shark?

Many sleepless nights, I’ll be wondering. I don’t know. But I’ll be on that same beach next year, same day, same tide, same whole bunker on, but this time I’ll be fishing with 50-pound braid.

If you’ve never fished the Derby before, please, do yourself a favor and give it a shot. There’s nothing like the beauty and serenity of Wasque at first light, or standing on a beach at 3 a.m. that seems like it’s the closest thing to heaven, or the sight of albies crashing bait and barreling through Cape Pogue Gut, that little 70-yard stretch of water that lights up with white water as these insane fish rip through. It’s a place where Yankee fans and Red Sox fans fish together side by side, and it’s a trip that should be on every striper fisherman’s bucket list.