“Sportfishing, even for the biggest fish, was not just a man’s sport,” Bill Akin wrote in The Golden Age of Montauk Sportfishing. “Women had always been part of the picture.”
Women – particularly the partners of wealthy sportfishermen – boated some impressively large specimens. One was Chisie Farrington, the wife of the sports journalist and big game fisherman Kip Farrington, who wrote a 1951 book called Women Can Fish and landed a 674-pound giant off Watch Hill, R.I. – the first tuna that had ever been caught on those grounds by a man or woman.
“As sought after as swordfish were in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s, they did not generate enough excitement in the fishing world to attract more than a few devotees to Montauk,” Akin wrote. “That changed when Kay Topping landed the first giant bluefin tuna brought into Montauk.”
Attractive female actors and models were often employed to glamorize trophy fishing.
“Female angler” seems to have been a common term in the golden era of Montauk big game fishing, at a time when women also were often described exclusively by their husband’s full name. Despite the heft of her haul, Gertrude MacGrotty (whose husband, Russell, donated the first ambulance to the Montauk Fire Department and was a Montauk Yacht Club commodore), was deprived of her given name in an August 1953 East Hampton Star fishing report:
“The real big catch of the season was a 646 lb. giant tuna caught on the Nebraska Shoals by Mrs. Russell MacGrotty who sailed on the family yacht, ‘Tumult,’ with Capt. Bill Staros and Mate Fred Salona on Tuesday the 4th. The fish was boated in one hour on a 24-thread line, 16 oz. tip with a Tycoon rod. This may be a woman’s record catch.”
There were exceptions, including Nydia Bruno, an award-winning surfcaster and a member of the Women’s International Fishing Association who fished and hunted with her husband, Harry Bruno.
Some couples worked together to capture their prey: Margaret Potts, for example, would scout for fish from her plane so that her husband, George, could pursue them from below in his boat. By contrast, there was Phyllis Whisnant, whom the Star credited by her real name as landing a 141-pound swordfish “on a 24 thread line, in 15 minutes” aboard the “Helen” in 1958.
“Phyllis Whisnant competed with her husband, Al,” Bill Akin wrote in his book, “even chartering separate boats on the same day.”
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