Get hooked on Florida fishing history with new Tampa Bay History Center exhibit

Tourists first started coming to Florida for two reasons. The warm weather drew people seeking the health benefits of year-round sunshine. But fishing in the Gulf and Atlantic, and the inland lakes, rivers, and streams, was the big draw, says Tampa Bay History Center Director of Curatorial Affairs Michelle Hearn.

A new History Center exhibit opening Aug. 23rd explores the history of fishing tourism in Florida, which today is a nearly $5 billion industry, according to Florida TaxWatch.

Tampa Bay History Center CollectionPostcard of St. Petersburg's Municipal Pier ca. 1940-1955“The Lure of Florida Fishing’’ features early artwork, vintage photographs and postcards, maps of “secret” fishing spots, and artifacts, including 59 lures made over the decades by companies in the Tampa Bay area. The exhibit spotlights the Tampa Bay area's role, from the late 1800s to the current day, in making Florida a fishing destination.

“Tarpon was the first big game fish,’’ says Hearn. “Tampa was huge in that.’’

Photographs show Ernest Hemingway, President Harry Truman, then Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, baseball legend Ted Williams, and other famous anglers fishing Florida’s waters. Vintage shots of everyday tourists reveal fishing’s widespread popularity at the turn of the century.

“It is funny, some of these old pictures with people wearing 1900s dresses and catching a giant fish,’’ says Hearn, curator of “The Lure of Florida Fishing.’’

She also finds it kind of funny to see an etching by commercial artist Kent Hagerman (1893-1978) showing people fishing in the Hillsborough River off the Lafayette Street Bridge around 1940. That bridge on what is now Kennedy Boulevard is crossed by thousands of cars daily, and the sidewalks are bustling with pedestrians.

“Nobody would stand there fishing in the Hillsborough River off the bridge today,’’ Hearn says.

Hagerman is one of four artists featured in the exhibit, which will be on display at the history center's Wayne Thomas Gallery through Jan. 11, 2026.

William Aiken Walker (1838-1921) mainly painted pictures of Black sharecroppers in the South. But when he would come to Florida to fish, he’d paint small images of fish such as Spanish mackerel, tarpon, and Nassau grouper, and sell them to other tourists, Hearn says. The exhibit features reproductions of 22 of his paintings, which were found in a shipping box sent to the Chicago World’s Fair in 1933.

And a large painting by Tampa artist Lamar Sparkman (1921-2010) shows tarpon jumping on a line from a party boat off Gasparilla Island. Sparkman spent his career as a cartoonist for the Tampa Times and Tampa Tribune before retiring in 1987 to concentrate on his art.

Tallahassee-based artist Conrad Brayman’s painted wood carvings of fish are also part of the exhibit.

"He’s a very amazing artist,’’ Hearn says.

Visitors can also check out late fishing writer and longtime St. Petersburg Times columnist Rube Allyn’s maps of hidden fishing spots. 

“Secret fishing spots have been around as long as people have been fishing, and putting those ‘secret’ spots on maps followed soon after,’’ History Center Director of the Touchton Map Library Rodney Kite-Powell says in a news release.

“The Touchton Map Library collection has dozens of fishing maps, and this exhibit gives us a great opportunity to share them – and those secret spots – with our visitors,’’ he says.

For more information, go to Tampa Bay History Center