The first fish to cross the scale was a 7.73-pound false albacore Sunday morning as the 74th Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby got under way. The derby is the Vineyard’s fall fishing classic.

The curtain rises at 12:01 a.m. Sunday, Sept. 15 for the 74th annual Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby. The first weigh-in begins at 8 a.m.

David Kadison chose the key that popped open a padlock to win a Suburu Forrester, and Paul Hoffman chose the key that won him a new center console fishing boat.

A record number of fishermen signed up for the 73rd Martha’s Vineyard Bass and Bluefish Derby. Fishing finishes today and the awards ceremony begins on Sunday at 1 p.m. at Farm Neck Golf Club.

Stories are reeled in every day at derby headquarters at the foot of Main street on the Edgartown harbor. A Gazette video captures a night at the weigh station.

Fish and more fish! That was the burden of the report from derby headquarters on Saturday noon.

Ray Cabot weighed in an 11.75-pound bonito on Sunday night, the second largest bonito to hit the scale in the history of the tournament.

Striped bass are plentiful this year and yet the big breeding females, the ones that star in the old pictures of derby fishermen straining to hold up 60-pound bass, have yet to return.

Derby fishermen, friends and family members mourned the loss of Ed Jerome, longtime president of the Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby.

Aubrey Warburton, a fourth-grader at the Oak Bluffs school, has been fishing since she was five. When talking with the Gazette this week, she wore a “Girls Kick Bass” sweatshirt.