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<br />Gene Bittler (Maybell, Colo.) recalled a story about 5-foot long Colorado <br />squaw fish caught in the Yampa River. <br />"Well, I've heard another story from the '30s when the river went dry <br />somebody picked one out of hole down there by the park and hung by the gills <br />on a saddle horn, on a little mustang horse that was no bigger than like a Welsh <br />pony and the tail fin was dragging ... in the neighborhood of 5 or 6 feet," Bittler <br />said. "I've heard this story enough that I think that maybe it had to be true." <br />Kenneth Bailey (Hayden, Colo.) homesteaded in the Cross Mountain area <br />and remembered a Colorado squawfish being caught in Lily Park. <br />"Some of the people told me that these was squawfish. Well at the time <br />nobody called them a squawfish," he said. "They called them a whitefish, and <br />they caught 'em out of the Yampa down there that'd go anywhere from 30, 40, <br />50 pounds. But everybody called <br />them a whitefish and they were kinda <br />built something like salmon. They <br />had pretty heavy scales." <br />Bailey remembered one family <br />catching a particularly large <br />Colorado squawfish: "The name was <br />Vascum and they caught one and the <br />gate going into the yard ... that post <br />was about a 5-inch post in diameter. <br />And they caught one of these white- <br />fish, and they cut his head off and <br />slid his mouth down over the top of <br />this here post and had him there on <br />the gate going into the yard. He was <br />probably about 50 pounds because <br />his mouth ... you see the post was <br />about this big around and they just <br />slide the mouth right over the top of <br />it. " <br />The biggest Colorado squawfish <br />Dale Stewart (Vernal, Utah) ever <br />caught weighed 26 and-one-half <br />pounds, but he and his brother, Max, <br />knew of a 60-pound Colorado <br />squawfish being caught in a seine <br />and a 49-pounder being caught on a <br />setline. <br />Dinosaur National Park Ranger <br />Glade Ross recalled seeing a picture <br />of a large Colorado squawfish hang- <br />ing off a horse: "You know I've seen <br />somewhere in Vernal there is a pic- <br />ture, and I don't know where the hell <br />it is, I've been trying to trace it <br />down. But there's a picture of a <br />squawfish on a saddle horn of a <br /> <br />Character- <br />istics and dis- <br />tribution <br /> <br />25 <br /> <br /> <br />Photo courtesy of Carl Gaensslen <br />A large Colorado squawfish <br />caught in the upper Green <br />River. <br />