When Alan Lovewell was a young child growing up on the Vineyard, his mother had worked out a summertime arrangement with a local fisherman. Teresa Yuan would exchange her well-respected egg rolls for some of Tom Turner’s weekly catch, creating what was probably young Alan’s first exposure to the concept of a cooperative fishery.

In the middle 1970s, trap fishing enjoyed a brief revival on the Vineyard on the site of an old Campbell and Flanders trap near Menemsha Bight. Chris Murphy of Chilmark set up exactly the same type of trap that the old-world Island fishermen were using in the 1930s, only he rigged his netting from floating 55-gallon barrels anchored to the bottom rather than using heavy wooden stakes.

This Sunday, Sept. 22, its Kid’s Day at the Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby. This means children of all shapes and sizes get to fish from the Oak Bluffs Steamship Wharf from 6 to 8 a.m. In days of yore, most everyone fished from this wharf, but that was a long time ago, when the Island was still a lawless backwater.

Seconds after the bell was rung at 8 a.m. Sunday announcing the start of the Martha's Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby, two fish were carried through the door, lifted onto the scale and recorded on the leader board in the Edgartown harbor weigh-in shack.

The shack at the end of Main street in Edgartown lies dormant most of the year. During summer months it is used by the Edgartown Junior Yacht Club. During the winter, it sits empty, a little outpost on the harbor. And for five weeks in the fall, the shack comes alive.

Fishermen participating in the 68th annual Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby are already out plotting a strategy for success. Nearly all of them will visit one or all of four popular fishing spots: Menemsha Jetty, Joseph Sylvia State Beach, Memorial Wharf and Metcalf’s Hole.