Thanks, eelslinger - it's interesting that 2nd Place for 1936 was taken by Cliff Talman with a 52# - Talman was a pretty notable bass fisherman around Newport back in those days.
Talman took 1st Place in the 1932 F&S Annual Fishing Contest with a 46 1/2# bass taken on a live mackeral at Turtle Rock. Of course, it was pretty easy for Talman to come up with bait, live and otherwise, since he owned the Talman and Mack Fish Trap Co. here in Newport, which used to be just a block from my house.
The story is he had a caretaker on his farm at Sachuest and Talman would have his trap boats drop bait at the Point for the caretaker to chum with, then Cliff would show up to take position on his rock - and he bagged some big bass that way, with the chummer doing double duty as gaffer. I've heard it said that Cliff boasted he never handled the fish himself, after the fashion of the wealthy members of the bass clubs, but I think that's more myth than fact.
The same article on Talman also mentioned the small size of the winning stripers through the '20's - sort of made me think, the bass population had crashed just after 1900 causing the closure of the West Island Club among others and how long it took the stock to rebuild.
Funny how the bass seem to rise and fall over 25 year cycles historically going back to the 1850's - makes me wonder about last season
Hmmm.... I'm going to have to talk to my esteemed friend Professor O'Nitis, the famous Irish marine biologist about this....