READY FOR THE PAN:
These trout were caught by John Vonk many years ago.

My first memories as a very small child in the early 1930s are of the Native Americans who speared salmon along the riffles on the Sacramento River at our ranch. Dressed in their bright, colorful garb, Polly Herd and other tribal members would walk from town to spear fish and gather acorns from the oak grove in our barnyard.

As I grew a little, we were able to go with Dad and his friends at night to watch them spear salmon. The fish were huge, often weighing 70 pounds or more. The men would use a wagon and team or horses to haul all of the fish back to our house. They would always wait for an unblemished big red male would come cruising by because they would never spear a female.

My first experience of observing a sturgeon was in a boat with our friend Glenn Bishop. We were fishing for bass one late summer evening prior to construction of Shasta Dam. At that time, the sturgeon migrated up the Sacramento River to spawn on the Pit River. We were floating down the river, near the present paved trail along what is now Anderson River Park, when I asked Glenn if he saw the huge log in the river. He said, “That is no log.”

About that time, the very large sturgeon — for that is what I had mistaken for a log — shot up the river.

Following the construction of Shasta Dam, and for a number of years afterwards, my mother, Margaret Rupert, fished for trout off a little natural island adjoining our property. She would sit on the island with her line and hook in the water while reading and enjoying the quietness and coolness of the day. The island was constructed almost entirely from the tree branches and moss that had floated down the river and got hung up among some large limbs from a Cottonwood tree that had fallen into the river. We caught some nice trout from that floating island until some youths came along and destroyed our fishing pier.

During my later grammar and high school years, the boys from town would come down and we would fish for salmon along the same riffles, known then as the Rupert Riffles due to their proximity to our ranch property.

My husband, John, began fishing for salmon and trout when our children were small. The largest fish he ever caught with a line and pole was a 60-pound salmon snagged right at the entrance to Anderson River Park. John would always come home from his fishing excursions with some nice trout.

However, I believe the best time we ever had fishing the Sacramento River was after we moved onto the farm and constructed the fish docks. As many evening as we could, we fished in our boat for the largest trout. It was so enjoyable to float down the river after a real hot day. At that time, there were very few boaters on the river. We all respected each other and no one hogged the prize fishing spots. It was so pleasant to watch the wildlife along the river and see all the trout feeding. We never caught more than we could use for our family. Those days are long past, however, with all the boat traffic on the river and our aging bodies.