Coming soon
Presidential Anglers
For nearly a century, the men who held the nation's highest office came to these islands for the same reason everyone else does — the fishing. Their guides were Keys men, their records were set on Keys water, and their stories belong to this community.
Presidents did not discover the Florida Keys. They were brought here by the same flats, channels, and reef line that drew every angler before them — and they were put on fish by local guides whose names are part of our archive.
This exhibit follows that record: Herbert Hoover's thirteen years with a Key Largo guide, Harry Truman's eleven working vacations in Key West, and George H. W. Bush's long attachment to Islamorada and to the guide who lived here. The presidential library photographs on this page are in the public domain.
Every fact below is drawn from presidential library records, published archival oral histories, and contemporary press accounts. Where a detail is an estimate or an account given years later, we say so.
1930–1961
Herbert Hoover and the Key Largo bonefish
Hoover came first as a sitting president. In February 1930 he boarded a private car on the Atlantic Coast Line's Havana Special with a trunk full of fishing tackle and a small briefcase of papers, and took a ten-day winter vacation in Florida — part of it spent on the water in the Keys, aboard the houseboat Saunterer at Long Key. Contemporary accounts note that he insisted on absolute seclusion — the most private of public men, talking fishing with his guests all the way south and ignoring the crowds who gathered at the stations to see him.
The longer story begins after the presidency. In December 1948, at the Key Largo Anglers Club, Hoover needed a new bonefish guide and was introduced to a young local named Calvin Albury. "It looks like I'm going to be your victim next week," Hoover told him. As Albury later put it in a 1967 oral history, Hoover was his victim for more than thirteen years.
The first trip set the tone. Albury poled him out onto the Gulf side and Hoover took a twelve-pound bonefish — a record catch for the Key Largo Anglers Club, and nearly double his previous best of seven pounds. From that day forward, Hoover asked for Albury every time he fished Florida, through 1960.
The Hoover Presidential Library holds the Calvin Albury Papers — a scrapbook of photographs, clippings, and correspondence — the kind of locally-made record our own archive exists to keep.
1946–1952
Harry Truman: the working vacation that ran on fish
Truman made eleven trips to the Little White House in Key West across his presidency, and the Navy photographers who followed him documented the part of the trip he cared most about. He fished from small craft off Key West, from the presidential yacht, and from borrowed boats, usually in a pith helmet and usually with an escort vessel trailing behind at a discreet distance.
The pictures below are the record. One is captioned, in the photographer's own hand, "The President has what is adjudged the best catch of the tournament." Another shows him in 1946, shirtless and grinning, swinging a grouper up over the gunwale. A third has him on the dock while his catch is weighed — the same ritual performed at every marina in the Keys, then and now.
1990–2008
George H. W. Bush and an Islamorada guide
Of all the presidents who fished these waters, Bush had the closest tie to Islamorada — and it ran through a local man. George Hommell Jr., an Islamorada guide and tackle-shop owner, fished with Bush for decades and guided him on the flats here while Bush was in office.
In April 1990 the sitting president fished Tarpon Flats off Islamorada with Hommell, and later taped a fishing outing with sportscaster Curt Gowdy in Keys water. He was a fixture of the bonefish tournament hosted at Cheeca Lodge, which carried his name and raised money for local conservation causes.
He kept coming long after leaving office. In 2008, at eighty-four, Bush hooked and released a tarpon off Islamorada with angler Andy Mill aboard — a fish estimated at roughly 135 pounds. Estimated, because it was released, the way this community increasingly wants its big fish handled.
That detail matters to our mission. The same islands that produced the trophy photograph also produced the catch-and-release ethic now taught to every child who comes through this building.
And the rest of the list
Others who cast a line in the Keys
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Fished the waters off Tavernier, in the Upper Keys, during Florida trips in the 1930s.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Followed Truman to Key West, where the Little White House and its fishing boats were already a presidential habit.
Jimmy Carter
Fished out of Marathon in the Middle Keys, part of a lifelong attachment to fly and light-tackle fishing.
Herbert Hoover
The only president who came as both a sitting president and, for thirteen years afterward, a regular Keys client.
Sources & photo credits
Where this comes from
- Photographs. The presidential library photographs above are United States government works in the public domain: the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum (Hoover and Calvin Albury, Key Largo, 1956) and the Harry S. Truman Library & Museum (accessions 64-576, 66-1433, 64-443, and 96-158; U.S. Navy photographs).
- Hoover and Albury. Calvin Albury's account comes from an April 1967 oral history recorded with Ray Henle and published by the Hoover Presidential Library, along with the Calvin Albury Papers, 1950–1974, held in that collection. The 1930 Florida vacation is documented in contemporary press coverage.
- Bush. The April 1990 Islamorada outing appears in the presidential daily diary held by the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library; the 2008 tarpon and the long friendship with George Hommell Jr. were reported in the Florida Keys and Miami press.
- Corrections welcome. If you have a photograph, a logbook, or a family account of a presidential trip in the Keys, we want it for the archive. Write to info@keysdiscovery.com.