In 1953 I found a wooden Atom in the mouth of a dead shark on South Beach. It was the first plug that I owned, and a couple of weeks later I caught a striper on it. That began my decades-long love affair with striped bass plugs, which continues to this day.
By Kib Bramhall
Captain: Fred Murphy Home Port: Vineyard Haven harbor The Name: Ishmael The Boat: Forty-eight-foot knockabout (i.e., no bowsprit) schooner
By Ivy Ashe
It was all very genteel, downright “Corinthian” as sailors would say, referring to the British tradition of “gentlemen sailors” who race around buoys for the pure honor of being able to say they won.
By Sean McNeill
Ask almost anyone about their childhood days at summer camp and they will regale you with tales of adventure, summer friendships, and cheesy camp songs they love to this day. At Sengekontacket Pond in Edgartown it’s no different.
By Olivia Hull
Ted Williams, “the greatest hitter who ever lived,” was also a star in the sport fishing world and a member of the International Game Fish Association Hall of Fame. Although he never fished on the Island, members of the derby committee and the Chamber of Commerce traveled to Fenway Park and presented him with a striper caught in one of the first derbies.
By Kib Bramhall
One night last fall during weigh-in for the striped bass and bluefish derby, I ran into Captain Kurt Freund from Fishsticks Charters. “Ivy, good to see you,” he said. I returned the greeting and I laughed.
By Ivy Ashe
“It’s crispy and delicious, almost a little sweet,” says Tim Broderick, a man who knows his fluke. The Chilmark fisherman was the host of last year’s fisherman’s fish fry, an annual tradition to mark the end of the commercial fluke season and a chance for the fishermen to slow down and enjoy this summer specialty they unload daily on Menemsha docks.
By Catherine Walthers
Three or four times a year, an excavator crawls out to the barrier beaches between some of our great ponds and the open ocean and makes incisions in the sand that open up floodgates. This is a diesel-powered version of a ritual that goes back to ancient times.
By Geoff Currier
Captain: Wayne Iacono Home Port: Menemsha Name: Freedom The Boat: Thirty-five-foot Bruno & Stillman fiberglass lobster boat. Built 1980 in Newington, New Hampshire. The Other Boat: Warrior, a twenty-foot fiberglass scallop skiff, makers unknown.
By Ivy Ashe
The old Lagoon Pond drawbridge had a good run, but after seventy-five years it was more than a little cantankerous.
By Geoff Currier
Captain: John Thayer Home Port: Lagoon Pond, Martha’s Vineyard Marina The Name: Kittiwake III. “I do not change the names of boats.” The Boat: Twenty-six-foot bass boat originally built of cedar on oak by Erford Burt at Burt’s Boatyard in 1952. The boatyard is now Martha’s Vineyard Marina, on the Lagoon [formerly Maciel Marine].
By Ivy Ashe
Fifty years ago, Anne Hale helped found the Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary on the shores of Sengekontacket Pond in Edgartown. Twenty-six years ago she published Moraine to Marsh, a slender, spiral-bound volume that became a treasured go-to guide to the flora and fauna of the Vineyard.
