Marron, Eugenie (1899–1999)

American sportswoman renowned for deep-sea game fishing . Born on November 22, 1899, in Jersey City, New Jersey; died in August 1999 in West Palm Beach, Florida; Columbia University, B.A. and M.A.; studied art with Alexander Archipenko; married Louis E. Marron (a real-estate developer).

A New York socialite and one of the few women to set world records for deep-sea game fishing, Eugenie Marron came into her angling career through her husband Louis Marron, a real-estate developer and an avid sports fisherman. (He would hold the men's record, catching a 1,182-pound swordfish off Chile in 1953.) One evening in 1920, while the Marrons were hosting a party at their home in Bay Head, New Jersey, a local skipper crashed the festivities to inform Lou that a school of giant bluefin tuna was running off the coast. As her husband made a dash for the door, Eugenie followed, arriving home the next day with a broken rib and a fish story involving a scuffle with a 430-pound tuna.

Hailed as the first woman to ever catch a giant bluefin, Marron spent the next 30 years traveling with her husband on fishing expeditions from Nova Scotia to Hong Kong, picking up records along the way. In 1954, in the seas of the Humboldt Current off Chile, Marron reeled in a world-record 772-pound broadbill. "It is a humbling thing to consider the tenacity and the courage and the brave hearts that albacora show in mortal battle," she wrote in her 1957 autobiography Albacora: The Search for the Giant Broadbill (Random House). "My hands have been rubbed raw in fights against them. They are king of all the deep-sea game." Marron eventually gave up fishing and retired to Palm Beach. Although some of her records have been toppled, the one for her 772-pound broadbill continues to stand. "I fished as though I were earning a living at it," she recalls. Marron also assisted in research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Miami on the central nervous system of the giant squid.

sources:

"Eugenie Marron, 99, Fishing Record-Holder," in The New York Times (obituary). August 21, 1999.

Jarvis, Louise. "Catch of the Day," in Condé Nast Sports. January 1998, p. 46.

Barbara Morgan , Melrose, Massachusetts