Issue 8.14
The summer when I was aged seventeen my brother, Albert, took me in his 1935 Plymouth from Butte, Montana to the west coast where we intended to work at an Army camp that was just building. AI was ten years older than I, and it was the year 1942 and America was a year and a half into World War Two. We ended up at Medford, Oregon where Camp White was being built. AI got a job right away in construction and I tried to lie my age to eighteen but I was small for age seventeen so it didn’t work but I did get a job in the civilian mess hall because they were desperate. My job was washing dishes. Each day I started at 8AM and finished at about 8 PM. I got paid for eight hours at 37 cents per hour. That was enough that I earned $300 for the summer. I got home with $200 and I gave half of that to the Scarf’s for my room and board.
At the end of summer, we started home in Al’s Plymouth. We drove through the Oregon, Tillamook area and the Grand Coulee Dam, passed Lake Pend EI Rae in Idaho and stayed a couple of days on the Bull river in Montana. AI knew where the big Dolly Varden fish were and how to catch them. He and I fished the Bull River which is in the logging area. We did our best fishing at the logjams. These were places where the logs had jammed up in the river. We picked one place where the logs were over a deep hole. We looked down into the water as we walked on the pile of logs and could see a number of large fish just swimming in the deep water below us. AI was an old hand at catching these fish so he told me how. Of course we couldn’t cast but I put on a flashing spinner with a large triple hook loaded with white maggots and lowered it into the fifteen feet deep water below us. AI said the flashing spinner angered the big fish and we hoped one would strike at it. Patience paid off and one of the smaller fish did strike and was hooked good. The problem was that The line got tangled up on a short branch protruding from a submerged log. That fish and I were at a standoff. The fish was hooked good and couldn’t get away but neither could I get him in. I was hungry for trout so I took off my shoes, handed my bill fold to AI and dived between the logs down the fifteen feet where I tool that fish by the gills with both of my hands and kicked my way to the surface. With AI’s help, I got the fish out of the water and safely netted. I prided myself at being a good swimmer and proved it that day. When we got the fish on dry land and got a good look at it, I was thankful that I didn’t let my thumbs get into that huge mouth because those sharp teeth could easily have severed my thumbs. On the bank there was a dead fish that could easily weigh 32 pounds. My fish weighed only 15 pounds. One fish was enough so we drove into Butte and to the Scarf’s house. We weighed and took a picture of me with the head of the fish at my belt and his tail touched the ground. The fish was cut cross ways into steaks and it fed the family for a few days. These fish came up from the lake in Idaho, but there are so many dams now that they no longer swim into Montana.
Sam Wyrouck can be contacted at 801-707-2666.