The 67th Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby is here!
The New York Times wrote a pretty lengthy piece on the Derby for this Sunday’s paper. Check it out; it’s a great intro to the event.
Anyway, this year I’m one of two reporters doing Derby coverage, and it’s been fantastic so far (here is a pretty lengthy piece I wrote last week about the four Derby fish). Fishermen are a bit hard to track down–since they’re always out on the boats–but they’re wonderful to talk to once you actually find them. They’re all very Hemingway-esque (shocker!), with their short, direct manners of speaking, and because fishing brings a mix of serious ego-quashing and quiet satisfaction, they have great perspective on life in general.
This morning, I covered the Kids Derby, which usually draws about 200 kiddos (and their parents) to the ferry docks in Oak Bluffs. This is the only time when the docks are used for anything other than loading and unloading passengers, and it couldn’t be for a better cause. I love seeing the youngest fishermen, the four-year-olds, rushing up to the weigh-in table clutching a teeny little scup, totally excited about the whole endeavor.
