Added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 2, 1991

I’ll get this out of the way: I know absolutely nothing about fishing. Never been inside a Bass Pro Shop, never read a Field & Stream article, never impaled a worm on a hook for bait. Now eating fish is one of my favorite pastimes, and intellectually, I realize that the tuna doesn’t jump into my poke bowl on its own volition. I’ll admit there’s something metaphorically resonant about that idea of pitching your line into the depths with no clear knowledge of what you’ll reel in. So it’s not like I have anything against fishing per se. It’s just that, much like football and emotional unavailability, fishing’s one of those quintessential American dude pastimes that I just never picked up as an interest. 

This is all to say that you don’t need to be an angling a-fish-onado (see what I did there? Yeah? Okay just checking) to find the history of the Tuna Club of Avalon utterly fascinating. You’re likely never going to make it inside the historic, members-only clubhouse in Avalon. It’s a good thing that there’s a great backstory here! So let’s dig in. 

Before the Tuna Club was founded in 1898, ocean fishing as a sport didn’t really exist. You might go out and see how many fish you could kill in one go, toss the carcasses on the beach and let the seagulls pick at it, or throw it back into the sea to be consumed by sharks. It was an anarchic, wasteful process. And not particularly sportsmanlike either, given that there were no real rules governing what constituted “winning,” or which fishing methods were kosher. 

Holder the Record Holder

All that changed after Dr. Charles Frederick Holder came to town. Holder was a second-generation zoologist from Massachusetts, and a curator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. He spent decades writing about animal life in books and popular science rags, even wrote a biography of Charles Darwin, among his many published works. Despite an active life, Holder was often in ill health. Like many wealthy easterners, he moved west on the advice of his doctor, who thought the milder climate and clean air of California could help Holder recover from a lung condition. He and his wife Sarah settled in Pasadena in the mid-1880s. 

Holder quickly found his place in Pasadena, with an editorship at Californian Illustrated Magazine, a spot on the Board of the new Throop College (later to become Caltech) and a charter role in the Valley Hunt Club, the organization that founded the famous Tournament of Roses Parade, still going strong today. Holder was the tournament’s first president. 

On June 1, 1898, Holder was in Catalina, following up on a tip that the fishing was amazing around the island. That day he caught a record 183-pound bluefin tuna with rod and reel, after a nearly four-hour battle over 10 miles of ocean. Holder later wrote that it was this experience that convinced him to found the Tuna Club.

16 days later, the Los Angeles Times was already reporting on the formation of a new tuna club based on Catalina, with membership made up of nine anglers who had each caught a 100+ pound tuna. The rules dictated that the current record holder automatically assumed the presidency (which may explain why Holder wanted five pounds added to his record-breaking tuna’s weight, owing to “shrinkage and loss of blood,” according to the Times). By July it had officially incorporated, and by March of 1899, the club had grown to just under 200 active members, plus honorary members like former US presidents Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison, and future president Teddy Roosevelt. 

The Tuna Club’s Goals

From its early days, the Tuna Club had two main aims. The first was to codify a set of rules for sportfishing. Members of the Tuna Club exclusively allowed rods in competitive fishing (no hand lines), and held that the size of the tackle had to match the size of the fish. Only one person was allowed to gaff the fish (hook it and pull it out of the water). For decades, the Tuna Club only permitted linen fishing line, even after a stronger dacron line was introduced. The idea was to introduce fair standards, inject a bit of gentlemanliness and give the fish a fighting chance. 

The Tuna Club’s second aim was the conservation of ocean resources. In addition to his decades as a zoologist, Holder was President of the Wild Life Protective League of America, and VP of the Audubon Society of California; clearly he was well aware that fish populations, like all populations, were not infinite. So he and the Tuna Club advocated for fishing methods that encouraged a smaller take. Later on, the club would push for laws protecting the waters around Catalina from commercial fishing, condemn the use of nets for catching game fish, and actively help restore populations of overfished species.

“…as a result of the efforts and example of the Tuna Club and its members, unsportsmanlike methods have, to a large extent, been eliminated from these waters. When a few years ago one fisherman would, by trolling with two or three hand lines, bring in forty or fifty yellowtail, sea bass, etc…which were often towed out into the bay and thrown away, the same person will now, by using a light rod, be satisfied with six or eight, and as each fish taken with thee rod plays for twenty minutes or more, the sport is greatly increased. The professional boatmen have heartily cooperated in this work, and now use the lightest tuna, yellowtail and rock bass rods, reels, lines, etc., and the reckless, wanton waste of game fish is rapidly becoming a thing of the past…”

-CF Holder, report to the Tuna Club’s Executive Committee, quoted in Los Angeles Times, March 3, 1899

The Tuna Club’s NRHP nomination form identifies 1916-1939 as the club’s “golden years.” It hit its maximum membership of 250, and game fishing was at an early peak, too. The fish population hadn’t yet been dangerously depleted from commercial overfishing, and there were huge innovations being made in the fishing tackle and boat technology used by big game fishers, many of them designed in collaboration with Tuna Club members. It was also during this period that the Tuna Club’s rules became industry standard. They were adopted by angling clubs around the world, and eventually by the International Game Fish Association, the organization that determines world record catches.

All along, world class anglers like western author Zane Grey (see visit #28 for his NRHP-listed house) were spreading the Tuna Club gospel to Australia, New Zealand, Costa Rica, Tahiti and beyond. Famous figures like Bing Crosby, Charlie Chaplin, Stan Laurel, Hal Roach, Cecil B. DeMille (a former president of the Tuna Club), Herbert Hoover and George S. Patton became members or honorary members. Winston Churchill hung out with Tuna Club members on a visit to Catalina in 1929. He even caught a 188-pound marlin within an hour on the water!

The Building

The beginning of the Tuna Club’s heyday coincided with the 1916 construction of its new clubhouse, a sprightly craftsman clad in white clapboard and shingles with green trim. A year prior, their original clubhouse had burned down in the same fire that destroyed half of the buildings in Avalon. Before that, most of the Tuna Club’s official business was done on a desk in the Hotel Metropole, which also burned down in 1915. 

The present building, propped up on barnacle-encrusted pilings, stands as one of the oldest non-residential buildings in Avalon. It’s a place for Tuna Club members to grab a drink and prep for a summer afternoon on the water, surrounded by photos, trophies and preserved fish commemorating club members’ greatest triumphs. The clubhouse has undergone just a couple significant changes over the years, including the extension of the deck on the ocean side, and the addition of a Ladies Annex in 1946-7 on the upper level. That was mostly to accommodate wives and significant others of Tuna Club members; women were explicitly barred from membership in the early days, and despite a stated non-discrimination policy, the Tuna Club has accepted very few non-men into its ranks over its long history. They could only point to two when the Avalon City Council asked in 1989. 

Still, for angling fanatics, membership in the Tuna Club is a hallowed thing. Sportfishing would look very different were it not for the folks that congregated in this humble craftsman at the edge of the world.

Thanks to Gail Fornasiere and Patty Salazar of the Catalina Museum for the historic pictures

Sources & Recommended Reading

+ AFTCO: “The History of Avalon Tuna Club – Behind the Story: Year of the Bluefin” (AFTCO.com, November 1, 2021)

+ “CATALINA ISLAND.: FISHING TOURNAMENT GIVEN BY THE TUNA CLUB.” (Los Angeles Times, March 3, 1899 – via ProQuest)

+ “CHURCHILL LANDS BIG ‘UN ON BRIEF CATALINA TRIP” (Los Angeles Times, September 23, 1929 – via ProQuest)

+ Darling, Jordan B: “The Man, the Myth, and the Marlin” (TheLog.com, July 20, 2021) 

+ Davis, Charles & Albert Herbold: Tuna Club of Avalon’s NRHP nomination form

+ Goodman, Adrianne: “Bias Denied: Club Photo Shows Female Member in ’31” (Los Angeles Times, April 23, 1989)

+ Gnerre, Sam: “Members of Catalina Island’s exclusive Tuna Club pioneered big-game sportfishing” (South Bay Daily Breeze, May 16, 2020)

+ “HOLDER, Charles Frederick” (Islapedia.com)

+ Holt, Grant: “Charles F. Holder: A Pasadenan on Catalina” (PasadenaHistory.org, July 20, 2020)

+ Sanford White, William with Steven Kern Tice: Santa Catalina Island: Its Magic, People, and History (White Limited Editions, 2002)

+ “SANTA CATALINA: A Leaping Tuna Club–Opening Night at the Pavilion.” (Los Angeles Times, June 17,1898 – via ProQuest)

+ “SANTA CATALINA ISLAND: SOCIAL SEASON OPENS WITH A BANQUET AND DANCE.” (Los Angeles Times, June 23, 1898 – via ProQuest)

+ “SANTA CATALlNA ISLAND.: Tuna Club Incorporated” (Los Angeles Times, July 22, 1898)

+ Thomas, Pete: “Pioneers on the angling front” (Los Angeles Times, December 9, 2003)