The Myth of the Breeze

Clarksburg Boat Launch

Yes­ter­day I watched a man slice open a 61 inch stur­geon– still breath­ing. He wore a flan­nel shirt, unbut­toned with noth­ing on under­neath. He was cov­ered in tat­toos faded to the point of being unrec­og­niz­able and wore a large tooth around his neck. He seemed to take a lot of plea­sure in rip­ping through the fish with his dull knife. I watched the stur­geon squirm at first, then calm to a shal­low breath. As the knife reached the tip of the fish tail, the stur­geon took one last big breath where its gills expanded and its head lifted, and then gave in and died. Inter­view­ing fish­er­men, I am forced, on occa­sion, to remem­ber that these folks are hunters.

The fella who caught it was thrilled and exhausted, wet up to his knees. The hook he used was almost straight­ened– that fish almost got away. (not the best pic­ture, but this is what a stur­geon looks like.)

Once the fish was open they exam­ined it for eggs. It is ille­gal to take female stur­geon out of these waters and there is a preva­lent poach­ing scene here. But I have only heard rumors of Rus­sians on the river at night with guns. But what would these fish­er­men here have done if this stur­geon had been female and filled with caviar (or bait, depend­ing on your angle)? Suture her up from head to tail and throw her back? Undoubt­edly, no. This stur­geon, how­ever, was a male.

The vet­eran fish­er­men I talked to on the other end of the park­ing lost may have thought dif­fer­ently of that fish. One of them men­tioned some­thing about a dis­solv­able thread. If you catch a stur­geon, you can make a small cut in the belly and check the sex. If you’ve caught a female, sim­ply sew the fish up and send it back. A 61 inch fish has seen its share of bat­tles, they are no doubt resilient. The treat­ment of a stur­geon may be a divid­ing line between these two groups of anglers.

These vet­eran fish­er­men were alto­gether wel­com­ing. They made no assump­tion (like many do) that I am an author­ity or the law. The minute I stepped out of my car at the boat launch I was greeted by Tony who imme­di­ately invited me over to his camp and gave me his chair. Tony made the occa­sional pass at me, but I am a pro at deflect­ing these com­ments by now, and Tony’s friends helped me out with the rep­ri­mand­ing respon­si­bil­ity. The four of these men sat around a fire made of a bro­ken table. Tony offered me a can of soup. “Now Aubrey, you look like a chicken noo­dle soup kinda gal,” he said. He opened a can and placed in over the fire for him­self– I declined his offer.

These men knew every­thing about the river. They could remem­ber the date that the dams were con­structed and the water started get­ting cold. And they remem­ber swim­ming in these waters when were still warm. One of the men claimed to be the old­est fish­er­man on the Sacra­mento River. With the excep­tion of one man (who has been try­ing to get a hold of the Wilder­ness Con­ser­va­tion Author­ity to pro­cure guides to clam­ming), none of these men really ate the fish they caught. They believed in throw­ing them back as there are so few left. The prob­lem, they say, is the dam. They say the water is too cold for the fish to spawn, and none of the dams have fish lad­ders so fish mobil­ity is trun­cated. There is appar­ently a fish hatch­ery at the base of every dam, but these anglers don’t eat wild-caught fish for preser­va­tion sake.

Tony fishes with his home­made fish­ing pole , works in dry-walling, and speaks of liv­ing with room­mates. None of them is drink­ing or smok­ing. They speak of Nos­tradamus and his pre­dic­tions and we chat briefly about the con­cept of white­ness (one of them refused to take the US Cen­sus because his ehth­nic group– Irish-American– was not rep­re­sented). They invited me back for a tour of the river and an ear­ful for sto­ries. I am seri­ously con­sid­er­ing it.