The Grand Isle Tarpon Rodeo Is Two Summers From 100, and It Started With Two Fish Under an Old Fort

For three days at the end of every July, Grand Isle fills up. The barrier island at the bottom of Jefferson Parish swaps its quiet for boat trailers, a rodeo tent and weigh-in crowds, all for a fishing tournament its organizers call the oldest in the United States. The International Grand Isle Tarpon Rodeo was founded in 1928, which puts its 100th anniversary two summers away.

This year's rodeo, held July 23 to 25, showed how much the island is at the mercy of the Gulf. Tropical Storm Bertha's leftovers kept the water rough, and the scales opened six hours late on Thursday, the Lafourche Gazette reported. For a day and a half, few fish came in. Saturday finally gave boats a calm day, and it was the best fishing of the weekend. Even so, no tarpon was hung on the scales. The fish the rodeo is named for showed up in the tag-and-release division instead, where the boats White Cap and Coon Pop each scored 400 points to finish first and second. Billy Cenac, fishing aboard Blue Monkey, was credited with the first tarpon of the rodeo. The heaviest fish on the board was a 157.8-pound swordfish caught by Daniel Field.

The rodeo's beginnings are more polished than its weigh-ins. Fisheries writer Jerald Horst, in a 2010 history for Louisiana Sportsman, traced the founding to an article Hugh M. Wilkinson wrote for the September 1928 issue of Louisiana Fur, Game and Fish. Wilkinson had caught two tarpon in August 1927 "under the walls of old Fort Livingston," the abandoned fort on Grand Terre across Barataria Pass. He pitched a tournament to New Orleans businessman John Cletus Donovan Jr., whose Alker-Donovan Company agreed to sponsor it, and the Grand Isle Tarpon Club was formed.

On Aug. 22, 1928, 11 yachts gathered at the island along with the Pelican, flagship of the state Department of Conservation. Most of the anglers were from New Orleans, and the roster included federal district attorney Wayne G. Borah and Chief Justice Charles A. O'Neill. Fishing opened at sunrise on Thursday, and Leo A. Marrero quickly landed a 103-pound tarpon to win the cup for the first fish. Before the weekend was out, Elvyn M. Moore brought in the fish that took the 1928 trophy, which Wilkinson described as "exactly 129½ pounds of molten silver." Nobody thought it could be beaten, so the anglers skipped Saturday's fishing and went sightseeing and surf bathing instead. They also ate a 117-pound jewfish, now called goliath grouper, that W. Hoehn had caught.

From there the rodeo grew into a summer institution, though its own record keeping never quite added up. Horst noted that organizers billed the 1949 event as the 17th rodeo, which fits a gap in 1930 and another during World War II. By 2009 the same event was being called the 88th. Much of the early paper trail is gone, too. Records that had been sent to the island for a new library were destroyed when Hurricane Katrina flooded Grand Isle in 2005.

What survives shows a rodeo that loved its prizes. In 1951 winners took home a Plymouth four-door sedan, eight outboard motors, a lawnmower, a .22 rifle and a pile of trophies, and attendance was recorded at 1,434 people from 87 Louisiana towns and 13 other states. Rich prizes brought rich temptations. Horst recounts rumors of net-caught fish being entered and a local politician whose tarpon had been caught so long before the rodeo that the hook tore out of its mouth at the weigh-in. In the early 1960s, organizers stopped giving away anything of serious value.

The crowds kept coming anyway. By 2009, Horst wrote, the island's population of about 1,525 swelled to more than 25,000 over rodeo weekend, and more than 2,500 people registered to fish. The tournament has been knocked off the calendar more than once since, by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the COVID-19 pandemic and Hurricane Ida, which battered the island in 2021.

It has come back each time. David Camardelle, Grand Isle's mayor since 1997 and a former rodeo president, told the Gazette before this year's event that attendance had climbed steadily since Ida. "I mean, it's packed," he said.

The modern version is built for families as much as for offshore boats. There are inshore, offshore and kayak categories, a kids' division with its own leaderboard for hardhead catfish and croaker, crab races and cornhole. Organizers say the rodeo has leaned toward catch-and-release and works with researchers studying tarpon migration, which helps explain how a tarpon tournament can end with no tarpon on the scales. This year's grand prize was $10,000. The rodeo is held during the last full weekend of July, and the 2028 edition will mark 100 years since those 11 yachts anchored off the island.