Fishing on Eel River [Image from the Palmquist Collection in the Humboldt Room of HSU]
Nuggets of old news is served up once a week by David Heller, one of our local historians
This week Odd Old News takes a look at how great fishing was in Humboldt County in 1907. From time immemorial local waters have provided the area’s 1st People with life-sustaining fish harvests. In the modern era Humboldt County has had a long history of being a destination for recreational fishing, and successful commercial fishing.
In the first decade of the 20th century commercial salmon fishing took off, partly enhanced by fish hatcheries, but primarily due to the advent of the use of the “gasoline boat”. Whereas motorized boats were uncommon in 1900, five years later they were in almost universal use.
“The reported catch for 1899 was 461,460 pounds of salmon credited to Eel River, while in 1904 the catch was 2,664,206 pounds, an increase of nearly two and a half millions of pounds in less than five years.”(Humboldt Times, 1/13/1906). Faster travel made for more fishing trips and fresher salmon hauls. However, this technological advance was a double edge sword. As well as increasing local prosperity, gasoline boats made it possible to come up the coast from San Francisco, illegally dynamite fish, and speed away.
“Trinidaders assert that their one time prolific cod beds are being rapidly ruined and robbed by a lot of ‘higher-ups’ in the trade of fish piracy. That speedy power boats, fitted up with all the appliances for dynamiting and carrying fish in large quantities, come up at all seasons from San Francisco and dynamite the rock cod banks about a mile and a half out to sea from Trinidad, and take vast quantities of the fish to the city market, is the assertion of people who are in a position to know whereof they speak. The charge is further made that most all of the fish sold in the San Francisco markets, whether from Trinidad or other parts of the California coast, are dynamited fish, as dealers in fish know from the fact that the flesh of the fish is soft and the bones broken from the effects of the explosive used….
Full Story: https://kymkemp.com/2020/10/16/odd-old- ... from-1907/
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