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
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
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.
Lungs tight from kicking up sawdust on a newly cleared trail, I searched my backpack for my inhaler. Weariness was written on my friends’ faces too. A dusty, panting dog lay in front of us, his head turning slowly to drink from a bowl of water. We had been hiking for sixteen miles – a journey that began halfway across the Island at Katama Point Preserve.
By Alison L. Mead
Last summer, signs on Vineyard beaches warned swimmers about Portuguese man-of-wars, the brightly colored siphonophores that deliver a painful sting. And anyone who has spent much time in the water in the summer is probably familiar with the big, pink jellyfish and the small harmless moon jellies of August. But there is a new gelatinous menace lurking in Vineyard ponds, largely unknown and barely visible.
By Sara Brown
When I took up saltwater fly-fishing in the late 1970s, I was blessed to have some wonderful mentors on the Vineyard. Legends such as Nelson Bryant, Arthur Sylvia, and Bruce Pratt were my teachers and encouraged me to learn all that I could about this newfound passion. Thus I jumped at an opportunity to travel to Florida in 1978 to attend a fly-fishing clinic run by Lefty Kreh.
By Kib Bramhall
When I walked the Caroline Tuthill Preserve earlier this year, what I noticed first was the aroma of the pitch pine forest, a smell that brought me back to my childhood when I used to visit my aunt and uncle who had a home very close to this sanctuary in Edgartown. The trails are narrow with soft sand, and are mostly covered by a blanket of pine needles,all of which makes for a pleasant floor to walk on.
By Albert O. Fischer
