By Peter Roos & Bob Griffin
Local History: George Roberts was a famous fishing guide with roots in Pinellas Point, Gulfport, Pass-a-Grille and Madeira Beach. He lived in the area between 1893 and 1928. His native stepmother said “Roberts was a born angler who learned to fish by the time he could sit up.” He lived to fish and fished to live. He was only 12 when he took his first client, H. O. Armour, of The Armour Meat Company in a rowboat for tarpon off Pinellas Point. Roberts was a colorful showman as well as a great guide. “He could tell funny stories, and he made fishing a great adventure.”
As Pass-A-Grille started to develop as a fishing destination, at age 20 he rowed from Maximo Point to Pass-A-Grille and begged George Lizotte for a job. Lizotte, owner of the famed Bonhomie Hotel, hired Roberts to be their exclusive fishing guide. “He became a wonderful guide and never failed to supply me with fish and stone crabs,” Lizotte said.
In 1907, a group of well-heeled locals formed the St. Petersburg Tarpon Club and the Bonhomie Hotel became the club’s official home. Tarpon caught by Roberts and his clients were often mounted by a local taxidermist and shipped by H. Walter Fuller to places up north to attract northerners to this part of Pinellas County. His work was seen all over the US, Canada, Europe, and in other distant places.
Many rich or famous people would come to Pinellas County and ask specifically for Roberts to be their guide, including baseball’s Babe Ruth. The way Roberts did it seemed easy. He went after silver kings barefoot, in a rowboat and pulled them in with a hand line. Roberts once said he had caught over 7,500 tarpon in his career. In January 1918, the Philadelphia Enquirer published a note by retail giant John Wanamaker about Roberts, “who, while he was baiting the lines on our little boat, pulled in a 3.5 foot kingfish on a little silk thread with an ordinary hook. By patience and care he let the fish take all the time it wanted and gently led him to the boat, to catch hold of him with his hands and lift him into the barrel. It was all done in fifteen minutes.”
According to the tale in Frank Hurley’s local history books, Roberts also played a major role in Pass-a-Grille’s first Christmas celebration. Not only had he rowed to Disston City (Gulfport since 1910) for candy, gifts and brought some local children back for the island celebration, but he also dressed up and played Santa. Roberts later moved to Mud Key (now Vina del Mar, off Pass-a-Grille) with his first wife, Laura Harrod. He lived there in an 8’x10’ shack with a sand floor he called “Haven of Rest.” But the mosquitoes were so voracious that they soon moved.
OLIVE ISLAND In 1912, Roberts moved north and homesteaded the south bank of Johns Pass. He took title to 138 acres and named his new home “Olive Island.” He did not know this, but this was the beginning of Madeira Beach’s economic development.
It was actually an island because there was a shallow pass located approximately one mile north at today’s 140th Avenue that was created by the hurricane of 1848. Roberts constructed a dock there for charter boats, added picnic tables, and a flimsy structure with two or three sleeping rooms and a kitchen. Roberts insisted that it was a hotel. And for a short time, it may have been the only building between Indian Pass (Indian Shores today) and Johns Pass. Roberts did not stay long. Noel Mitchell, St. Petersburg real estate agent (known for the Green Benches of downtown St. Petersburg), bought Olive Island in 1913 (supposedly paying $60,000) and renamed that end of the beach “Mitchell’s Beach.”
CABBAGE KEY He later married his second wife, Elda May, and lived once again in Pass-A-Grille. He later moved into Silas Dent’s hut on Cabbage Key, between today’s Tierra Verde and Ft. DeSoto. They lived through several hurricanes in the 20’s. The big one of 1921 wrecked most of his fishing boats and there was little business to be had. He took up wrecking and salvaging. Many of the boats he salvaged he kept as his own.
When the real estate bubble burst in about 1926, Roberts’ local career as a guide also came to an end. In 1928, he moved to Port Aransas, Texas, and died in 1960 at the age of 78.
The Stubborn Fisherman by wife Elda Mae Roberts (1970)
Surf, Sand & Post Card Sunsets, by Frank Hurley, Jr (1977)
St Petersburg, And It’s People by Walter Fuller, (1972).