7751 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

boy you get along those greasewoods, where they're shaded from the wind, where the sun comes in them from the east and you dig down there and get them grubs. They'd be about as big around as my finger. And about that long, but they'd be curled up just like a shrimp. They had a yellow head and they was good for fishing. They was good fish bait. Them was the good days, that was when I enjoyed life." When Cook wasn't using grubs to catch Colorado squawfish he would sometimes use swallows. "... you know those barn swallow or sparrows?" Cook said. "Well we used to get rid of them knocking their nests down and knock some down without them knowing, and we'd just put a harness on them and throw them out in the river ... I caught a couple of three fish (Colorado squawfish) with them." In "Fishing for the Endangered Species," Chuck Mack (Craig, Colo.) wrote about a day in the early 1950s on the Green River near Lodore Canyon, when swallows were falling into the river and being eaten by Colorado squaw- fish: "We would go down into Lodore Canyon until we came to the first rapids. That's as far as we dared go because we had to turn around and come back upstream. There were hundreds of swallows who had their nests built of mud on the canyon walls. This one time when we were fishing, the baby swallows were just leaving the nest. A lot of them fell into the river and drowned. Every big squawfish in the Green River must have migrated to the canyon to feast on the swallows because we sure caught a lot of them, or let's say, we had a lot of them hooked. The tackle we were using was a little light for a 50-pound fish. We managed to land a lot of 10 to 20 pounders. Every one that we gutted out had a stomach plumb full of baby swallows! We also caught a lot of nice channel catfish. They too, were feeding on the swallows." Cottontail rabbits as bait Besides mice, sand grubs and swallows, cottontail rabbits were a popular and effective bait for Colorado squawfish. "I used a half a cottontail rabbit head on one line and a chunk of breakfast bacon about that square on the other line," said Bill Allen (Vernal, Utah) when talking about fishing in the Green River in Browns Park in the early 1930s. "I caught a I5-pound whitefish and a 20-pound whitefish right down by the Swinging Bridge that first spring I was there when we were working on the bridge." Ex-Oak Creek resident Pete Kerzan (Lakewood, Colo.), recalled a story about a Colorado game warden showing him how to catch large Colorado squawfish using cottontail rabbit heads in the Lily Park area on the Yampa River during the late '30s and early , 40s: "I went down to catch the blue channel fish, catfish. I liked them better than the trout, but I caught some of those big mouth whitefish. They weighed 15, 20, 25 pounds, but you couldn't eat them; they turned soft right away. "Wilson the game warden was transferred down to Browns Park, and he said 'You can stay in my cabin instead of putting up a tent.' "He said 'Have you ever caught any of them whitefish?' I said, you mean Sporting qualities of the endan- gered fish 11