As the 74th Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby enters the final week, competition is picking up.

“It’s been slow,” derby committee vice chairman Phil Horton said at Tuesday morning’s weigh-in. “But sometimes this time of year it begins to pick up.”

He pointed to the daily bluefish leaders to prove the theory. It has been a historically low year for bluefish, especially from shore, he said. But the Columbus Day weekend brought numerous bluefish to the scale.

One, a 17.49-pound bluefish, was brought in by Dylan Kadison on Sunday, vaulting him to the top of the boat grand leaderboard.

There also were a number of bluefish caught from shore on Monday.

Nelson Wise’s 11.15 pounder was a pound shy of knocking off the longstanding leader of the shore bluefish category, Robert Bottary.

One local angler lingering around derby headquarters Tuesday morning speculated that the storm that swept over the Island late last week may have pushed the fish towards the shore.

Cosmo Creanga, also at headquarters on Tuesday, was excited to weigh in a false albacore to check off the final box in his shore grand slam. There have only been five shore grand slams registered so far.

Mr. Creanga fishes exclusively from the shore because he gets motion sickness when out on a boat. He said his luck began to pick up once the storm passed, but that didn’t stop him from fishing in gale force winds.

With a pained expression, he recalled losing what he believed to be his biggest striped bass of the derby while casting into the surf on Friday at the peak of the storm.

“Lady luck looked the other way,” the angler said, shaking his head.

Mr. Creanga wasn’t the only one to be skunked during the storm. From Thursday to Saturday there were only two fish weighed in.

“It’s hard to cast into gale winds,” Mr. Horton said.

Mr. Creanga won the shore grand slam last year, and hopes to be the first in derby history to win in two consecutive years.

Also new to the leaderboards is Lewis Colby, with a 6.43-pound bonito landed from shore last week.

Mason Warburton, a member of the junior division, is still standing at the top of the grand leaderboards in the shore striped bass category with a 37.58 pounder. Clinton Fisher climbed to the top last week with his 34.42-pound fish caught from a boat.

For false albacore, Shawn Emin has been at the head of the shore category since the last week of September with a 12.13-pound fish. And Westley Wlodyka’s 12.96-pounder has led the boat division since the first day of the derby.

In the junior division, the competition seems to have boiled down to two families: the Warburtons and the Kleemans.

Mason And Aubrey Warburton are at first and second from boat striped bass while Volkert Kleeman is in third.

Aubrey Warburton also stands at the top of the boat bonito category for the junior division, a quarter of a pound above Nikita Kleeman.

The derby runs through Oct. 19. The awards ceremony is Sunday, Oct. 20.