Phosphate, a railroad and a fish
Gasparilla Island sits at the mouth of Charlotte Harbor, and Boca Grande is the village on its south end. The Calusa lived here by 800 or 900 A.D. By the late 1870s fish ranches were working the harbor, and one at the island's north end, Gasparilla, salted down big catches of mullet for Havana. Many of its fishermen were Spanish or Cuban.
Then came phosphate, found on the Peace River above Punta Gorda in 1885. Boca Grande Pass is one of the deepest natural inlets in Florida, so the Charlotte Harbor and Northern Railroad was finished across the island in 1907, ending at a 1,000 foot pier. The port ranked fourth busiest in Florida in 1969, and the line was abandoned in 1979.
The trains carried people as well as rock. By 1910, the Boca Grande Area Chamber of Commerce says, the pass was already famous among anglers for tarpon fishing like nowhere else. The railroad company laid out a village with a depot, shops and the shaded stretch of Second Street now called Banyan Street, and wealthy northern families built winter homes. The causeway opened in 1958, and the old rail bed is now the island's bike path.
How tarpon fishing works here
Tarpon are not a fish you eat. In Florida they are catch and release only, and any tarpon over 40 inches has to stay in the water unless the angler holds a tarpon tag and is chasing a state or world record. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission also has rules written just for Boca Grande Pass. All year, no gear with a weight hanging below the hook may be used there. In April, May and June, a boat may put out no more than three lines at a time, and breakaway gear is banned.
The tournaments have changed with the rules. The Boca Grande Club started an invitational in the early 1980s, and in the early 1990s the chamber took it over as the World's Richest Tarpon Tournament, with first place worth more than $100,000. It moved from weighing fish to all release in the 2000s and is still fished with live bait only. Earlier in May, the Ladies Day Tarpon Tournament opens the season with a field of around 40 boats.
