8205

• UCREFRP Catalog Number: 8205
• Author: Quartarone, F.
• Title: Historical Accounts of Upper Colorado River Basin Endangered Fish.
• USFW Year: 1995.
• USFW - Doc Type: \
• Copyright Material: NO

"We ate quite a lot of fish because it made a variety in your diet," she said.
"Ira Burton, he was an early settler here. He and his family used to come over
and go seining quite a bit. They'd take one end of the seine out into the river in
the boat and throw the other end on the bank and come in, just make a circle and
just bring the fish in. They'd bring 'em in by the washtub full.
"When you'd get a lot like that you'd can what ... we weren't a family to
waste things. We never wasted anything."

Commercial seining in Grand Junction
Reports from several western Colorado residents indicate that commercial
seining occurred near Grand Junction, Colo. Al Wing (Grand Junction, Colo.)
recalled the story: "Oh sure, a lot of people caught fish, in fact, when we moved
down here there were a few fell as who had a boat and they put the boat in the
river in Grand Junction and seined down to Fruita, and there was a fella with a
horse and wagon to bring the fish back. They'd go the next day and sell them.
And the next day they'd seine again and the next day they'd sell them. They'd
ring the bell and drive up and down the streets."
Charles Inglehart (Fruita, Colo.) also heard about men seining the Colorado
River near Grand Junction: "Yeah, there was a fella, I never did see him use a
net, but there was an old boy, I can't think of his name and he had a boat out of
tin, a boat made out of metal and he used ... they said he used to net fish."
Arthur Daugherty (Clifton, Colo,) also remembered people seining the
Colorado River in the late 1920s and commercially selling the fish.
"And there was a fellow here that seined the river. Seined them and sold
the fish," Daugherty said. "He'd put a seine in down here at Main Street bridge
and seine clear to Fruita and by that time he had a wagon load of fish, or nearly
so. And he'd come up and he sold 'em cheap. It was a source of food."

Young 'businessmen' and endangered fish
Some upper basin children would catch and sell endangered fish
to get spending money.
As Carol Hines (Moab, Utah,) recalled, "Kids used to try sell them around
here to get a little money. Times were pretty hard back then in those days and
some of the kids would sell the fish. Sometimes people would just help them
out."
Near Parachute, Colo., Lee Hayward caught Colorado River fish and sold
them,
"During the Depression we'd sometimes getting a stringer full, you know
of carp and such, and we'd take the fish and peddle them. Get a nickel a piece
for the suckers and genhree of them and get 15 cents and that was more money
than we ever had," he said.
In Green River, Wyo., Carl Gaensslen (Green River, Wyo.) recalled selling
chubs and Colorado squawfish as a boy to two Chinese restaurants. Here he
starts by talking about selling "bonetails" (a common name for chubs in the
area): "Now the bonetails, they never got about 12, 14 inches long and the suck-
ers got to be pretty good size, and we sold them to the Chinamen or anyone who
would buy them. We fished for a living. We'd sell them to Chinese restaurants
and they'd sell 'em as trout, or (we'd) sell them around town ... sell them on the

Uses of
endangered
fish

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