Surfcasters were the stars for this 33^rd year of the Martha's Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby. The stripers were huge, and there were more big ones than anyone expected. In the pages of the daily derby records are entered 20 striped bass weighing more than 40 pounds each, and winning daily prizes. Seven of those fish weighed more than 50 pounds. In most past derbys, a 50-pound bass would be an easy winner. This year, a 52-pounder didn't finish in the top three. It is a derby of striper surprises.

The curtain fell at 2 p.m. on Friday on the Island’s twentieth Consecutive fishing derby and without doubt its most successful. Up to the final hour, the fish arrived at the weighing-in station, and thus the derby ended on a high note, with sixteen bass and eleven bluefish weighed in at the final hour.

President Eisenhower, at his Newport vacation headquarters, has welcomed the gift of a Martha's Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby trophy, a Vineyard bluefish hauled from the ocean at the South Beach by Arthur W. Ben David, and presented through Benjamin F. Morton, executive secretary of the Martha's Vineyard Chamber of Commerce, and of the derby. If the baked bluefish served on the presidential table was not of succulence and fine flavor, the Newport cooks ought to be sternly disciplined.

The curtain fell on the eleventh annual fishing derby on Monday, an event that has brought the Vineyard much publicity and gained for the Island many new friends. This particular derby did not measure up to average in some particulars, although it surpassed all other derbies the Island has held in others.