Every fall, the Vineyard is seized by fish fever as one of the East Coast’s best known saltwater fishing tournaments gets underway.

Fishermen vie for awards and bragging rights for the biggest catch caught from the shore or from a boat. In addition to the striped bass and bluefish, the tournament covers bonito and false albacore. Anglers under 15 compete in the junior division.

Crowds gather twice a day at the weigh-in shack by the Edgartown Yacht Club as the daily and weekly leaderboards are updated. At the end of the tournament, the top fishermen in eight divisions have a chance at grand prizes, including a truck and a boat.

See highlights of derby history at the Vineyard Gazette's Time Machine.

A true community event, the derby sponsors a program that provides fish to the Island’s elderly population and each year provides four-year college scholarships to Island youth.

For more information about the derby, go to mvderby.com.

Each day and night of fishing provides participants in the derby with choices — not only of baits and lures and lines, but favorite fishing spots that become secrets only when competitive fish are landed there. Whether watching the sunset at Lobsterville or the sunrise at South Beach, whether casting into the rip at Wasque or bobbing over the waters of Middle Ground in a Boston Whaler, fishermen know that the search for their finny friends is a competition that, more than anything else, brings them together in a spirit of camaraderie and gives them yet another excuse to celebrate the matchless joys of our Island.

It's the time of year when everyone want to get the blues — bluefish, that is, along with false albacore and bonito. The seventy-seventh annual Martha's Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby starts at 12:01 a.m. this Sunday and will not conclude until mid-October, by which time any number of Islanders and visitors will be puffy-eyed and zombie-like, conditions brought on by a passion for the fishing competition that overwhelms lesser human endeavors such as sleep.

Gone fishing is the rallying cry for the Island in the second week of the derby. And as always the competition signals that time in the Vineyard year between the waning days of summer and the arrival of autumn. Some say the golden months of September and October are the two best in any Island year. Now come the noble days, the high blue ocean skies and a clarity of light that colors the sea in glitter and draws the far horizon near.

All eyes are on the weigh station at the foot of Main street on the Edgartown harbor. Each morning and evening from 8 to 10, the fish are brought to the scales. Stories of the big one caught and the ones that got away carry on throughout the day and night.

“I must go down to the sea again,” wrote the poet John Masefield, “to the lonely sea and the sky.” The title of that poem is Sea-Fever, and we remember it at this season each year, when a similar affliction strikes Island residents and visitors. Forget Lyme: Derby fever is the disease in which the bite of a fish is not the cause, but the cure. Its characteristic mark is a derby button with the entrant’s number, and another indicator of a bad case is a vehicle festooned with rod holders.