The great inventor Thomas Edison (1847-1931) spent some 26 winters in Fort Myers, Florida, escaping the cold winters of New Jersey and experimenting on several very different projects in his newly built laboratory. According to Michele Albion’s book entitled The Florida Life of Thomas Edison (2008), Edison and his second wife, Mina, were able to relax at their Seminole Lodge on the Caloosahatchee River, entertain friends, take boating excursions and fish.
One of Edison’s goals while in Fort Myers was to catch a tarpon, something that he had much trouble accomplishing. Finally, in 1904 he succeeded, but with an ironic twist. When he was about to set off with a friend for another attempt to catch a tarpon, he realized he did not have enough mullet bait for both him and his 14-year-old son, Charles, so he gave one mullet to Charles and told him to stay behind and try his luck from a small rowboat while Thomas and a friend went up the river looking for tarpon. The inventor may have thought: “That one little fish should keep Charles occupied, but he surely won’t catch much with that bait.”
When the inventor returned home later in the day, he had his boat’s flags flying high and was shouting from the bow: “I got a tarpon! I got a tarpon!” He then proudly displayed his 40-pound fish. “Great,” said son Charles, “but take a look in my little boat.” The great inventor hesitatingly looked into the boat and—much to his chagrin—found that his 14-year-old, using the one small fish that his father had given him, had landed a 100-pound tarpon.
The elder Edison was quite disheartened and told his fishing companion to throw overboard his “measly” 40-pounder. The friend, realizing that the tarpon was Edison’s first, refused and, in fact, had both fish mounted and placed side by side on the porch of Seminole Lodge. For years afterward, the family had much fun comparing the two fish, but at least the great inventor had caught his first tarpon.
When President-elect Herbert Hoover visited Thomas Edison at Seminole Lodge in 1929, the statesman addressed the inventor, not as “Hello, inventor” or “Hello, great American,” but rather as “Hello, fisherman!” The photo here shows Edison on the left, Hoover in the middle, and Mina Edison on the right.
Fishing and also boating on his beloved Caloosahatchee River from his long dock gave Edison much enjoyment. Such activities no doubt took his busy mind off the pressing matters of trying to find a rubber source to make the tires that his friends Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone needed for their car and tire businesses, respectively. I don’t know if the two mounted tarpons are still on the wall of the porch there, but—if so—they are a direct link to one of our most inventive visitors.
Kevin McCarthy, the award-winning author of “South Florida Waterways” (2013 – available at amazon.com for $7), can be reached at ceyhankevin@gmail.com.