Shelter Island’s celebration of fishing: The Lions Club Snapper Derby

The annual Lions Club Snapper Derby is the day when Shelter Island teaches its children to fish. 

On Saturday, Sept. 5, youngsters on Shelter Island, with more than enough adult supervision, traded in their pool toys and bicycles for fishing poles and bait, and headed to the shore in pursuit of the wily snapper, a baby blue fish weighing less than 1 pound. Their goal? To bring in the biggest, small fish.  

Young anglers fished all day, in every creek, from every bridge and boat and brought their catch to the weigh-in at Town Hall Field at 4 p.m. to see who caught the biggest snapper, the biggest blue-fish, and who caught and released the most fish. A new prize category this year was the snapper team competition for the three-person team fishing for three baby blues with the greatest combined weight.

By 10 a.m., on a glorious Saturday morning, Ben Hlavacek had been fishing at First bridge for an hour and had already caught four snappers and kept one.

Meanwhile, on the Gardiner’s Creek side of Second bridge, Laith Bader had established himself as an encourager of other fishers, including his neighbor Fritz Carey and friend James Paddington. He said his day of fishing had been fun, but snails were the main catch, since the snappers did not exactly leap into his bucket this year. 

Sisters Ella and Reese Brantuk were casting into the current running under Second Bridge, but had only one fish between the two of them, with time running out before weigh-in.

The weigh-in was a festival of fish, watermelon, popcorn and the sweet anticipation of recognition as a fisher among fishers. A steady stream of children clutching plastic bags and buckets with fish in various states of consciousness stood in line to learn the official weight of their fish. At least one parent was seen “brushing off” a snapper that weighed in at just over a pound, to no avail.

 The highlight of the day was the award ceremony, as the crowd of fishers and their parents heard the names of the winners. The winner of the Snapper Derby was Grace Nojsbal with a snapper that was a blueberry shy of a pound at .965 lb. In second place was Bridget Bartilucci followed by David Bartilucci, Abigail Palmiotto and Coco Bartilucci.

Enzo Angelvy took the catch-and-release category with 17 fish landed and let go, followed by Abigail Palmiotto, Dave Bartilucci, Cade E. and Everly Thomson.

The winning team, “O, Snap” (consisting of an adult, John, plus Cade and Evy) caught three snappers totaling 1.165 pounds for the win.

The biggest bluefish — 17.95 pounds — was caught by Jackson Clark, who has been in the elite group of anglers with the biggest blues since a few years back when he won with a fish that outweighed him. Some youngsters had to be strongly encouraged to touch their slimy catch long enough to place it on the scale, but Jackson embraced the challenge with both arms. The other winners in the competition for biggest bluefish were Max Penuel, Henry Meyers, Simon Meyers and Coco Bartilucci.

Below are more photos by Charity Robey of the great day.