The “Most Strenuous of Anglers’ Sports Is Tarpon Fishing”: The Silver King as Progressive Era Outdoor Sport

Abstract This paper examines and discusses Progressive notions of masculinity through the outdoor pursuit of tarpon angling. While more popular Progressive Era sports including baseball and football have long been the focus of sporting historians, adventures including hunting and fishing draw similarly clear connections between Progressive notions of manhood, competition, and fellowship. Similar to hunting in the Far West, the battle with a large tarpon off the coast of Florida appealed to sporting men because of the brute force it took to subdue one; the sport drew these prospective outdoorsmen away from major Northern cities and towards a sporting target singular in its size and presence. Sporting men reveled in the competition as well as the congeniality of the hunt, drawing themselves together on the fishing grounds and in the region’s lodges, while simultaneously attempting to distance themselves from all others through extraordinary catches.