Bullshistory fish stories.

Okay, I’m way too busy for this, but I can’t resist a good fish story. Fish stories and my family go hand in hand. When we were all kids we were raised on lots of fish, deer and wild game. Some of it was even legal. All of these stories have origins before 1935.

Olmarnriver said... (paraphrase)
Ed Downing said the largest salmon he'd heard tell of was a ninety pounder ["caught by an Indian" ] out of Jackson Valley who promptly traded it for a sack of flour.

Oregon said:
Most likely a small sack of flour for a 90 lb. downstreamer.
who promptly traded it...

Then here’s the story I told:
Oregon
Don't knock downstreamers, That's how we ended up in Garberville.

Seeing as how we are now telling fish stories, the Branscomb’s have a story about my, and Oregon's, great grandfather Ed Branscomb catching a fish in Ten Mile Creek in Laytonville. The creek ran by his house, about a hundred yards away. They used slip point spears to catch fish back then. NO, it wasn't legal, but the creek ran through the family ranch for miles in both directions, so it was hard to tell an old-timer that he couldn't fish in his own creek.

The spear has a barb that is attached to a rope, that barb slips off when stabbed into a fish. Typically you tie the other end of the rope around your wrist, so as you are fumbling to put down the spear shaft on the river bank, the fish doesn't get away.

Grampa saw a big fresh fish so he stabbed it. As he was putting the spear shaft away, the fish came to the end of the rope. They say that the rope came tight so hard and fast that it lifted grampa clear off his feet and into the water. The fish drug him through the pool and out the lower end. My grandfather Roy caught grampa Ed bumping through the riffle, and heading into the next hole.

They say that it took three of them to land it, and that Grampa was lucky that he had someone fishing with him or he might have ended up in the ocean.

The typical ironic ending to the story is that they didn't weight the damn fish, and weight is the first question that anybody asks. They do say that when they cut the head off, it completely fit a peach lug! The guess is about 60 lbs!

I don't know what is wrong with my family, but they never have an ending to their stories. My uncle Ben tells a story about a great Indian battle in the Laytonville valley. When asked who won... (Drumroll) Nobody won, they went home because it rained! Just don't expect big endings from my families history stories.

Then… as a I often do, I fact-checked my facts with my mother. She is a great source of facts about history, but, just like all of us, her memory adds her own twists to things. She is good on the things that were important to her, but crummy on the things that she wasn’t really involved in. I also remember that she traumatized my childhood by pointing out a different rock as “Black Bart Rock” every time we went to Ukiah. Laugh, but ALL the kids in the fifties had outlaw heroes. My was “Black Bart, the Gentleman Bandit, and PO8”. A really cool outlaw, but it frustrated me to no end to not really know which rock that he hid behind! Crap! I did not know where the “REAL black Bart rock was. Woe was me! The good news is that the new freeway took it out. It doesn’t bother me anymore!

Now back to my fact checking… Mom says that she remembers Grampa Roy using both hands to hold up a fish. It came up to his chin, but the tail was laying fully flat on the ground “laid out in front of him”. She said that “the fish was wider than he was”. She said that they did weight it, but the scale only went to 50 pounds and it hit the end with a thud when they tried to weigh it. She doesn’t remember the peach lug story, but she did say that a lug of peaches was much larger then, than now.

She went on to say that the fish might have been caught down by Leggett, but she is not really sure who or where it was caught. She said that she thought that grampa Roy caught the fish and that is was around 1935, he was fishing alone and almost got pulled in. She said that maybe it was two different fish, there were MANY large fish back in the 30's. The good news is that she distinctly remembers the fish.

Like I have often said, every South Fork of the Eel history stories have at least 5 versions.

I should also say that nobody ever tells a Laytonville fish story without invoking the name "Ed Downing" so there you have it. A South Fork of the Eel story with a beginning a middle and an end.