It’s 5 a.m., pitch black outside on a cool, clear October Friday morning. Tony H. Rezendes Jr. is cruising through the woods, first by truck on a track that barely qualifies as a road, then by foot on a rough path, to one of his favorite fishing spots.

As the 68th Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby enters its final days, the bonitos and false albacores have arrived in full force.

All three of the top boat bonitos were caught in the past week, with Bob Clay’s 11.49-pound fish leading the division. Several large albies have also made their way to headquarters. Sam Bell currently stands in first place in the boat-caught albie division with a 13.24-pound catch.

It was the first chilly day of fall and West Tisbury middle schoolers had their hands stuffed into their pockets as they waited outside for the school day to begin. “Can we go into the gym?” one ventured to Donna Lowell-Bettencourt, the new principal who seemed like she’d always been the principal. “It’s cold.”

The history of Seven Gates Farm goes back to 1887, and for generations a parade of farmers, shareholders and conservationists have done just about all they could to keep the land and buildings of this enclave looking, working and feeling largely unchanged.

At first, it was just a peach basket nailed to a telephone pole. Vincent Frye was 12 in 1952 when he begged his parents to put up a basketball hoop outside his Oak Bluffs home. All the other kids on Wamsutta avenue had sporting equipment in their yard. So the “net” went up on the pole across the street, at the corner of Niantic Park. Neighbors came over to play ball, and the rest, well, is history.