The signs around the high school all point toward a showdown.

Like the handwritten message taped to the wall inside the boys' locker room.

"10-game preseason is over. KHUNA Nantucket!!!"

Or the chants echoing in the halls, through the gymnasium and out into the crisp November air.

"Keep the Cup, keep the Cup, keep the Cup!"

On Wednesday morning, under a warm sun and blue sky, David and Karen Berube were out on Cape Pogue Pond, at it again.

Heading into this year's fall football season, Martha's Vineyard Regional High School head coach Donald Herman knew his team was going to face new challenges. He just didn't expect them to come from off the field.

A string of disciplinary actions - resulting in numerous team suspensions - has thrown the Vineyarders' season into a tailspin.

In the end, it was a 12.48-pound false albacore hooked in the shallows off Memorial Wharf in Edgartown, and a 10.13-pound bonito snagged in 60-foot seas off Noman's Land that proved to be the grandest catches of all as the 59th Annual Martha's Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby came to a close on Sunday.

With two days to go before the close of the 59th Martha's Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby, tournament officials are already calling this year's event one of the most successful in the history of the competition.

Sitting on Squid Row behind the Texaco station in Menemsha is a pretty good place to be if you want to learn something about fishing.