There was a time when the town wasn't called Port Aransas. It was called Tarpon, Texas — named after the fish that made it famous. From the 1880s through the 1960s, the Atlantic tarpon shaped everything about this place: its economy, its infrastructure, its culture, and its identity. Guides built their lives around the Silver King. The world's wealthiest sportsmen built the most expensive fishing club anyone had ever seen on a barrier island across the channel. Tackle manufacturers sent their equipment here to be tested. And then, within a single generation, the tarpon all but disappeared. This is the story of the rise, the fall, and the slow return of the fish that defined Port Aransas.
How It Started
Historian Dr. John Guthrie Ford believes the tarpon fishery was discovered soon after the Aransas Pass jetty project began in 1880. Workers building the jetties saw massive schools of tarpon in the pass and started hiring Mustang Island boatmen to take them fishing. The first tarpon caught on rod and reel anywhere in the world was landed in Florida in 1885. Within a decade, Port Aransas had reoriented its entire economy around the fish.
Before 1876, the Mercer Logs — the primary historical record of early island life — contain no mention of tarpon or rod-and-reel fishing. The pre-tarpon island economy ran on cattle roundups, ship piloting, commercial netting, and harvesting roseate spoonbills for the plumage trade. Tarpon changed everything.
The Name Changes
The town's names tell its own story. In 1888, the first post office was established under the name Ropesville. On July 17, 1896, postmaster Emma A. Roberts changed the name to Tarpon — a declaration that the fish was now the town's identity. The population was about 250. By 1910, the name changed again to Port Aransas, an aspirational choice reflecting ambitions to become a major seaport. But the tarpon era was far from over.
A Typical Fishing Day
In the 1920s through the 1940s, a tarpon fishing day started early. Anglers were called at 5:00 AM. Breakfast at the Tarpon Inn, which packed lunches and served dinner on return. On the fishing grounds by 6:00 AM. Guides rowed clients through the pass to the open Gulf and trolled along the surf line where immense schools of tarpon swam in deep guts between the sandbars.
The tackle was simple by modern standards: a 5-and-a-half-foot rod, number 9 linen line, and live mullet cast in front of approaching schools. A drying spool for the linen line was standard equipment. Multiple boats competed simultaneously for the same schools. An eight-hour fishing day was the norm. The fish were photographed rather than eaten — tarpon are not good table fare.
Ed Cotter and the First Motorized Sport Fishing Boat
Ed Cotter was the first boatman to operate a power fishing boat in Port Aransas — and possibly in all of American sport fishing. Around 1900, Colonel Ned Green of New York purchased a powerboat and paid Cotter to travel to Chicago to learn to operate its Packard engine, which ran on naphtha. By about 1904, Cotter was using the powerboat to tow fishing skiffs — believed to be the first time a motorized boat was used for sport fishing in the United States.
Cotter also owned the Tarpon Inn. His name lives on in Cotter Avenue, one of Port Aransas's main streets.
“Ed Cotter is believed to have operated the first motorized sport fishing boat in the United States — paid for by a New York colonel, powered by a Packard engine that ran on naphtha.”
The Most Expensive Club the World Had Ever Seen
In 1899, Edward Howland Robinson Green — son of Hetty Green, the woman Wall Street called "the Witch of Wall Street" — founded the Tarpon Club of Texas on St. Joseph Island, adjacent to Aransas Pass. It was, by every account, the most expensive and exclusive sporting club the world had ever seen.
The two-story cypress and pine clubhouse exceeded 12,000 square feet. White exterior, green trimmings, red-shingled roof. It was lit by 126 incandescent lamps powered by an electrical plant — visible for miles at sea on a barrier island in 1899. The first floor held private offices, billiard rooms, a kitchen, dining rooms, a dance hall, and a veranda. The second floor had 18 sleeping rooms, servant quarters, and a parlor.
The members called themselves the "First Four Hundred Sportsmen of America." Their combined wealth ran into the hundreds of millions. They came for tarpon fishing and duck hunting — killing so many waterfowl that sharks gathered in the nearby waters. The club drew intense press coverage from 1898 to 1902, then closed in 1904. Green left Texas in 1910.
The Records
Key Facts
- 1909 season
- 297 tarpon on light tackle
- Biggest at Tarpon Inn
- 7 ft, 168 lbs (1931)
- FDR's catch
- 5 ft, 77 lbs (1937)
- TX state record
- 229 lbs, 90 in (2017)
- Max size
- 6+ ft, 200+ lbs, 10-ft jumps
The 1909 season produced 297 tarpon caught on light tackle. Only 12 exceeded six feet. One was a world record at six feet, six inches. One angler caught seven tarpon in a single day.
On July 13, 1931, Dr. Stirling E. Russ caught a seven-foot, 168-pound tarpon that is still mounted at the Tarpon Inn. On May 8, 1937, President Roosevelt caught his famous five-foot, 77-pound silver king at 3:27 PM. The Texas state record for tarpon stands at 229 pounds and 90 inches — caught in 2017, decades after the fishery's peak.
Atlantic tarpon can exceed six feet in length, weigh over 200 pounds, and jump up to 10 feet out of the water. They are called the Silver King because of the way sunlight reflects off their large, silvery scales — each up to three inches in diameter — as they leap from the surface.
The Hooper Trophy
Colonel Hooper, president of the Aransas Pass Tarpon Club (headquartered in the Tarpon Inn), donated one of the most coveted trophies in sport fishing. The Hooper Trophy featured a solid silver base topped with a bronze leaping tarpon. The rules were designed to match the difficulty of winning the America's Cup: to win, an angler had to land two tarpon over six feet in the same year, using a five-and-a-half-foot rod and number 9 linen line.
What Killed the Fishery
The tarpon fishery peaked in the 1920s through the 1940s and collapsed in the 1950s, largely complete by the early 1960s. The causes were multiple and compounding.
First, overfishing. Mature tarpon were routinely killed in tournaments. They were sometimes dynamited or netted, and the carcasses used for fertilizer. Killing ten in a day was common. There was no catch-and-release ethic.
Second, the loss of juvenile nursery habitat. Records show a lack of small fish after 1960 while large fish remained — a clear sign of recruitment failure, meaning new fish were not being born or surviving to adulthood.
Third, the Texas drought of 1949 to 1957, which brought 30 to 50 percent less rain to the region. The drought led to dam construction: 69 dams were built between 1957 and 1970, including the Longhorn Dam on the Colorado River. The dams reduced freshwater inflow and nutrients to the coastal estuaries, increased salinity, and disrupted the food chain that juvenile tarpon depended on.
Fourth, pesticides, which Texas Parks and Wildlife identified as a contributing factor to the decline.
“69 dams built between 1957 and 1970. The dams didn't just hold back water. They held back the nutrients, the freshwater inflow, and the food chain that juvenile tarpon needed to survive.”
The Silver King Today
Tarpon are still caught off Port Aransas from June through September, in the 40-to-150-pound range. They are strictly catch-and-release in Texas. The consistent bite has returned, though nowhere near historical levels. Scientists at the Harte Research Institute are actively studying the local population.
The Deep Sea Roundup — Texas's oldest fishing tournament, running since 1932 — evolved from the original Tarpon Rodeo when the tarpon declined. The 88th edition was held July 11-14, 2024, with about 600 entries. The Boatmen Association that organized the first rodeo is now Port Aransas Boatmen Incorporated, a 501(c)(6) nonprofit with over 160 members.
The tarpon scale tradition continues at the Tarpon Inn, where over 7,000 signed scales line the lobby walls — the oldest dating to 1892. The most famous belongs to FDR. He never slept at the Inn. But his signature is still there, along with those of Hedy Lamarr, Edward Teller, Duncan Hines, and thousands of anglers whose names are remembered only by the scales they signed.