THE BIG ONE

Atlantic Monthly Press

Contents

Chapter One

Photo TK

Grown men have cried over the derby. They have ignored their wives for week after week, sleepwalked through work day after day, stayed up all night long, skipped out on their jobs altogether, drawn unemployment, burned through every last day of their vacation time, downed NoDoz and Red Bull and God knows what else. They have spied on their rivals and lied to their friends. They have told off strangers and cheated like lowlife bums. If you believe the conspiracy theorists, they have prosecuted bogus charges of rules breaking to get their adversaries tossed from the competition. People have died fishing the derby. In 1993, four anglers-two fathers and their young sons-drowned when their boat sank in heavy swells on the second-to-last day of the contest. In 1947, a Boston businessman crashed his plane trying out a new fad: spotting schools of bass from the air, then landing on the beach and casting away at them. A nearby fisherman rushed to give first aid but couldn't save the man. "All that," he lamented, "for an old striped bass."

An old striped bass, yes, but it's not only that. Catch a winner in the Vineyard's beloved annual fishing contest and they'll etch your name on the all-time roster of champions. You'll earn a spot in a tournament history book that starts during the Truman administration. It's something like taking the green jacket at the Masters. "I'm after derby glory," says Dave Skok, a professional fly tier and two-time derby winner. "That's what it's all about for me." For a certain class of Vineyarder (and aspiring Vineyarder), for those who haven't already made their millions and plunked them down on the massive trophy mansions so fashionable on the island today, winning the derby is as close to immortality as they're likely to get.

The conventional wisdom about modern-day Martha's Vineyard goes something like this: popular summer tourist destination; propelled into the national consciousness when U.S. senator Edward Kennedy drove off Chappaquiddick's Dike Bridge in 1969; backdrop for the movie Jaws; presidential vacation spot for Bill and Hillary Clinton; former address of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis; host to A-list cocktail parties, yachting regattas, and presidential campaign fund-raisers; land of multimillion-dollar mansions; playground for the fabulously rich and famous, whose ranks of visitors and residents (past and present) have included James Cagney, Ted Danson, James Taylor, Carly Simon, Billy Joel, William and Rose Styron, John Updike, Art Buchwald, David McCullough, David Letterman, Diane Sawyer, Mike Wallace, Walter Cronkite and Lady Di. All of that is true, as far as it goes. But the place is not quite so flashy as its press would suggest. The island's moneyed class has traditionally been low-key-this is not the Hamptons; one writer called its vibe "reverse-chic"-and after the summer is over these ranks are outnumbered by the middle class and the working class and the anonymous.

To hang around in the fall is to see the off-hours Vineyard, the place as the year-rounders know it. The island morphs back into an isolated, tightly knit community where everyone seems to know everything about everyone else. It feels as if someone has released a pressure valve. The tourists and glitterati are (mostly) gone. The lines are shorter, the crowds thinner, the days cooler. If you're a Vineyarder earning most of your annual income during the summer season, September means the mortgage is paid, the bank account is full, you're secure for another winter. It's time to blow off steam, and for a certain cross section of islanders that means it's time to fish the derby.

This year, the contest runs through October 13, but from the very beginning, at 12:01 a.m. on September 9, hundreds of men, women, and children are out on the water chasing the four fish of the derby: striped bass, bluefish, false albacore, and bonito. They have good reason to start early. A quarter of a million dollars in prizes are at stake in thirty-two divisions, eight each for adults, fly rodders, juniors under age fourteen, and children under age eight. The biggest catches each day earn anglers fish pins-cherished mementos people wear on their hats or hang on their walls-and, in the adult divisions, $5 to $20 in cash. The top three finishers in each class at the end of the contest take home rods, reels, and shopping bags filled with lures, line, sunglasses, and other fishing accessories. The anglers who catch the biggest of the four species from the shore and from a boat are "grand leaders," and they win $500, a heavy-duty outdoor jacket, a framed print of fishermen at the Gay Head cliffs painted by island artist Ray Ellis-and a shot at the grand prizes: a nineteen-foot Boston Whaler and the Chevy Silverado, each worth about $30,000. For hardcore fishermen, the most sought-after titles are the shore and boat "grand slam" awards for heaviest combined weight of the four species, a feat that demonstrates complete mastery of the fishery. Win one of those and you get $500, a bag of high-end fishing gear, and the undying respect of the Derby world.

Three thousand people-half of them islanders, half visitors-will enter the competition by the time it ends next month, and I'm one of them, Badge No. 402. I'm here to see whether the Great Fish Gods hold me in their favor, since I'll be fishing almost every day, and winning the derby is half-luck anyway. But mostly, I'm here to see what happens when an island full of the fish-addled have 838 hours to feed their passion. Among the many people who are possessed by fish during the derby are a high school teacher, a chef, a painter, a rhythm-and-blues singer with a boat he calls the Dinner Belle, a real estate agent, a gas station attendant, and just about every plumber, carpenter, and electrician on the island. They are men and women, fathers and mothers, teenage boys and girls. They are businessmen, doctors, and blue-collar workmen. They are fly-fishing specialists in their twenties with new high-tech gear and salty old-timers in their seventies using lures and techniques that have changed little in the past half century. The derby invades people's dreams. Fishermen have subconscious premonitions about a particular fish at a particular spot. Gangs of mainlanders-many from fishing clubs with long histories of their own-show up to fish for a weekend, two weeks, a month, the whole contest. Two fly rodders come from Italy. Teachers show up at school on an hour's sleep, and students show up carrying stinking fish they killed the night before. "It's the only time," says taxidermist Janet Messineo, "that you can walk through town and you're covered with squid gook and you smell bad and you look awful, and everybody's smiling at you. 'Oh how you doing? How's the derby?' The whole community sort of rallies behind derby fisherman." Contractors fail to show up at job sites and don't answer phone calls. One fishing hero talked his wife into including the competition in their wedding vows. He promised to put up with her allergies and she promised to put up with his constant pursuit of a winning fish. "It's a lifestyle on this island," Lev's father Walter says. "It's a sacred kind of thing."

The derby is a lottery ticket, an ego boost, a chance to die happy, a shot at island renown and modest riches, a chance to win. Here are all of life's amorphous pursuits boiled down into something you can hook, kill, lug into town, mount, and hang on the wall. "Lives change during those five weeks," one derby fisherman told me when I first called around to ask around about the competition. I laughed, but the man didn't join in.

"I'm serious," he added, and I stopped chuckling. His voice was flat and steely, as if we were discussing something truly grave.

This little fishing contest? This is no joke.

At 4:30 on the first morning of the derby I drive into Menemsha, park at the beachfront, turn off the engine, and sit, waiting and watching. The Texaco is shuttered and dark. Fishing boats bob in the harbor. I roll down the passenger-side window and hear the faint clang-clang of the bell on the green buoy out in the Vineyard Sound. I can just barely make out the beach and the waves and the twin jetties along the inlet to the harbor. The moon is a sliver of a crescent.

After all I've heard and read about the competition, I almost expect to see a mob converging on the parking lot: para-anglers appearing in the sky to storm the jetties like something out of a grainy war movie or men ducking out from around every corner, derby badges pinned to their hats and fishing rods brandished like weapons. But what I see is more like the aftermath of an all-night party. One guy is lying on the beach under a blanket, his head on a sand-sculpted pillow. His partner is sprawled in the front seat of their pickup. A fly fisherman is asleep on the sister jetty across the channel in Lobsterville. They were all working the beaches for stripers at the official midnight start of the derby. It can pay to start early. Some years, the winner has caught the big bass on the first day, and once a guy landed it in the first ten minutes. But none of these guys had that kind of luck this morning, and they trickled into the harbor in the darkness to wait for dawn-the time when other derby fish are known to storm the jetties.

I watch from the car for a while, then the sky starts to lighten, imperceptibly at first and then quickly, with each blink. As if an alarm has gone off the sleepers stir. The fisherman on the beach jumps up and shakes out his blanket and walks over to the truck and wakes up his friend. The guys speed-walk out to the jetty, and when it's just light enough to see I gather up my rod and tackle bag and follow.

We're after two derby species this morning. One is the false albacore (the hipsters call them "'cores" but to everybody else they are "albies") and the other is the bonito (or "bones"). The fish are drawn to the inlet to feed on baitfish-scup, peanut bunker, silversides-sucked in and out every six hours by the tides. On the end of my line is a lure called a Maria, a slug of metal encased in a hard, translucent plastic with a treble hook hanging off the end. I start casting into the roiling water.

The jetty is an L-shaped stack of boulders that runs along the beach for a stretch, then juts out into the Vineyard Sound. At the tip is a navigational aid tower, rusty but solid, that marks the port side of the inlet with a square green sign and the number 3. The tower doubles as a rod holder, tackle-bag rack, and beer stand. On a post at the foot of the jetty is a weathered white sign with a warning written in black marker. It reads:

walk on rocks at own risk

Slipping on the rocks is a hazard, but only one of many on this particular jetty. I've been warned that Menemsha can be a tough place. With so many hooks being thrown around in such a confined spot, fights are bound to break out. Guys down shots from miniature liquor bottles, chase them with beer, and smash the empties in the rocks. They jockey in front of you and cut off your casting angle. They fire their lures from point-blank range at the cormorants paddling by the rocks. Some otherwise rugged fishermen are unwilling to brave the crowd.

Before long I see Lev's friend and fishing partner, Geoff Codding, pull up to the Texaco station in the huge Titan he won in last year's derby. Geoff got a college degree in environmental policy and aspires to be a commercial fisherman, but for now he earns a living mowing lawns and harvesting scallops. Not much gets in the way of fishing the tournament every day. Geoff-wearing his derby uniform of waterproof boots, blue jeans, and Red Sox cap-gets out of the truck and talks to some buddies filling up their boat at the gas dock, then returns to his pickup and drives over to the spot on the beachfront where cell phones work. One of his friends might call with reports of fish someplace else. From the front seat of his truck he can watch the water and decide whether it's worth fishing. He sees what looks like a few fish breaking the water's surface at the end of the jetty. Then he spots the telltale sign of fish: everybody on the rocks is bent at the waist, reeling as fast as they can. He grabs his rods and his bag of lures and falls in, casting languidly.

Within minutes, the harbor is teeming with people. A dozen fishermen line the Lobsterville jetty across the water, and more are pouring onto the beach beside it. Boats slide through the inlet and take up stations just off the beach or rumble off to spots unknown. By the time the albies begin their assaults on the baitfish hugging the rocks, I find myself behind fishermen three deep. The men on the rocks are all business. There is little of the usual chatter, and nobody's touching the alcohol tucked under the tower-a six-pack of Coors longnecks and a plastic twenty-ounce bottle of Pepsi spiked with Yukon Jack. The group seems to move as a single life-form: whipping casts, changing directions on a dime, doing whatever it takes to get lures in front of fish. I am forced to stand back and watch in awe. I couldn't fit a cast between them if I tried. When the jetty fishermen are at work, it can either be a symphony of coordinated motion, with one or two guys hooked up and dancing from rock to rock and going under and over each other's rods, or it can be a tangled mess. The pros know how to keep out of each others' way. It would take me a few weeks to figure out how to fish the tip without screwing up the works.

Fishermen have an easier time of it on the Lobsterville jetty just a short cast across the inlet. The fishing is comparable but the two spots may as well be different worlds. I never saw a fly fisherman on Menemsha, where they are regarded as pompous hotshots who are overly fastidious about their gear. (People who fish lures and bait using regular spinning reels have a hard time figuring out the fly fishermen. Why do they spend so much time tying flies and perfecting their casts when they are practically assured of catching smaller fish than everybody else? The answer: even catching a smaller fish is more challenging on a fly rod.) Some disagreements span the inlet. If fish are running in or out of the channel, people are often casting directly at each other. When it works it's like music. Everybody casts and retrieves in rhythm, lures returning to their owners in perfect time. Tranquillity reigns. When it doesn't work-when a Lobstervillian entangles a Menemshan, or vice versa-one fisherman has to open his bail while the other reels the mess up and untangles it. Generally, it's a polite transaction. No harm. Don't sweat it. Happens to everyone.

Sometimes, of course, it's not. One year a fly fisherman on the Lobsterville jetty had an albie on and a Menemsha spin fisherman cast over his line and (the fly fisherman believed) started yanking. As they went back and forth, a boat steamed out of the inlet and cut the line. Pissed beyond belief, the Lobsterville fly fisherman got into his pickup truck and drove the twenty minutes around Menemsha Pond to the other side. He strutted onto the rocks, fly rod in hand, and cast over the offender's line. Things devolved from there. Choice words were exchanged and the fly line slashed, but no fists flew. Afterward, the fly fisherman apologized. People marveled that he had managed to stay so angry for the entire trip from Lobsterville to Menemsha. "You can get two warring tribal villages over there," said Nelson Sigelman, the managing editor and fishing columnist for The Martha's Vineyard Times. "Fishermen have been warring since they first learned how to make a bone hook. Why would this be different?"

As the jetty fills up this morning, a fisherman named Tony Jackson gives me an object lesson in what can go wrong. Standing out on the farthest rock, he draws his rod back over his shoulder, the treble hook of his lure dangling among the circle of fishermen, and then sweeps it toward the sea. There's a whipping sound and then his rod stops. He looks behind him and sees that he has hooked the sleeve of another angler's T-shirt. The snagged fisherman, who wears a camouflage hat and has the build of an ironworker, doesn't even flinch. He looks down at his arm and then at Tony. Somebody unhooks the lure and without a word they go back to work. But with his carelessness, I suspect, Tony has risked a savage beating. He came within an inch of the fisherman's triceps. Hookings aren't uncommon, but they usually end with an expensive and time-consuming trip to the ER, and nobody wants that on the first day of the derby. It would have made a rough morning even more trying for Tony, a red-bearded dock builder who descends from a famous maritime family. Blood is already oozing down his legs from a trio of wounds inflicted by small bottom-feeding sharks called dogfish. He had caught three of them before dawn on the jetty. As he tried to unhook one, it thrashed and the hook dug into his shin. He slipped and fell on the rocks reeling in the other two.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from THE BIG ONEby David Kinney Copyright © 2009 by David Kinney. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.