###

During the 1930s and ‘40s, Fernbridge pool was among the best-known salmon fishing spots in the western United States, if not the world. As the first Eel River pool above tidewater, it hosted thousands of salmon and steelhead that gathered there in late summer and autumn as they prepared to move upstream. This annual salmon migration attracted hordes of eager fishermen, who jammed into auto courts in Fortuna and nearby towns, or camped on the river banks. And men, women, and boys growing up in the valley shared in all this excitement.

Fernbridge pool, confined solely to the north bank, was deep and much longer than it had been in more recent times, running from the bridge itself upstream for more that a half-mile until it narrowed to become Palmer Creek pool. It was possibly 100 yards wide at its widest point.

Fishermen commonly trolled in early morning from rowboats, and one memory about trolling there stands out especially for me. It has to do with my nephew, Wallie Cheeseman; the year was 1939. Just about every morning when the river was fishable that season, Wallie rode his bike from Fortuna to Fernbridge at daybreak, and time after time he was skunked: he would get no strike at all, or someone would cut across his line when he was playing a fish, or the hook would pull out, or whatever — some unlucky thing was forever happening. I would see him at high school later on those days and ask about the fishing, but I really shouldn’t have asked — his sad face told it all: he had caught no fish. It was the same story day after day; I really felt bad for Wallie, but admired him for his iron determination to catch a salmon. That guy simply would not give up!

His break came one weekend morning when the two of us were trolling at Fernbridge; when the sun was barely above the horizon he hooked and landed a salmon. The common practice was to beach the boat when you hooked a fish, work it carefully up to the shore until it fell over on its side, then slide it up on the gravel. On this particular morning Wallie got a strike, and he did everything just right, expecting, I’m sure, that his jinx would take over at any minute. But this time things worked out right for him. He finally landed his first salmon, a king that weighed 18 pounds.

Glowing with that success, we resumed fishing, and within a short time, he hooked another salmon, and his luck held again, this time in the shape of a 24-pounder that still had sea lice on it.

We fished some more for my sake, but got no more strikes. Although I felt happy for Wallie, I was more than a little envious too; I felt it was my turn to have some luck. But the salmon trolling typically went flat when the sun was on the water, and it did that morning. Deciding to give up on trolling, I had Wallie drop me off on the deep side of the river, where someone had tied a flimsy wooden dock to the willows, and I switched over to bait casting. Within a few minutes, I caught a big “half-pounder,” a steelhead about 18 inches long. That was the best I could do, so before long we both quit.

Wallie hung the salmon on the handlebars of his bike and rode back proudly to Fortuna, and I followed, carrying my dinky little half-pounder. On the way, Wallie jokingly told me I could slip my fish down the throat of one his salmon so I wouldn’t be embarrassed to be seen with it. His suggestion really bugged me at the time, but I eventually came to realize that after trying for so long and not catching any salmon, Wallie had a right to feel kind of smart-alecky when he finally broke his jinx.

From that point on, Wallie caught salmon almost every time he went fishing — right on into adulthood. It was as if the fishermen’s patron saint had decided to test him rigorously, and he passed, so it now rewarded him for life. My luck was never good, but I didn’t fish that much. One weekend that fall, though, I hooked a salmon at Fernbridge pool, but when it was close to the bank it tried a last run, and I was so eager to beach it that I wouldn’t give it line. At that point the hook pulled out, and came sailing back and hit me in the chest. I cried in fury and frustration, knowing very well I should have let the fish run. (But I never fully learned that lesson; as recently as last September, on a different river, I made the same dumb mistake and lost a big silver. I blame it on excitement.)

###

Here’s a Fernbridge pool story of a different kind: For many years, members of the Southern Pacific Rod and Gun Club of San Francisco chartered a train for a weekend of fishing on the world famous Eel River. Their Pullman cars were shunted of to a siding at Fortuna, and local fishermen would take them out fishing for a day or two. During their 1941 trip, I agreed to row one of these visiting fishermen around in my 10-foot boat, which was very unstable, very tippy. Although a storm was moving in, I picked him up and we went fishing as planned. I rowed the man from one end of Fernbridge pool to the other, trolling our lures (probably Andy Reeker wobblers) back and forth, up and down the pool, even after heavy rain started falling and everyone else had gone in.

My guest was not only a determined fisherman; he was also a jovial drinker. He had two pint flasks of whiskey with him, and he offered me a drink, which I declined; I didn’t think people should drink while they fished. But he kept taking snorts from one of the bottles, and telling corny jokes. As the morning wore on he was obviously feeling no pain, or cold either.

Finally, with no sign of fish, no let-up in the rain, both of us thoroughly drenched, and him drunk, I decided to call it quits. When we reached the shore (on the steep north bank of the river) I told him to sit still in the stern until I unloaded the boat and pulled it up on firm ground. I removed the rods and oars from the boat, and tied up, then told him to crawl carefully to the bow. By that time, however, he was beyond being careful about anything, so he tried to stand up, and of course, the boat tipped. When he tried to lean the other way, the boat tipped in that direction, and you can guess the rest. The boat and the man kept up their unequal balancing act faster and faster, until the man, arms flailing the empty air, pitched over backwards and disappeared below the surface in a spectacular splash, and the boat turned over.

For a few seconds, all I could see above water was the man’s hat, drifting into the current. But soon the hat’s owner popped up, coughing and spitting water, grabbed the side of the boat, and pulled himself ashore. He had lost his tackle bag with his gear and the remaining pint of whiskey, and although we searched for some time, we were unable to find it in the muddy water. Finally I righted the boat and we went up to the car. I drove him to our place, and my mother bundled him up in blankets by the stove while she dried his clothes as well as she could. After she’d fed him some warm food, and he got dressed, I drove my dejected guest back to his Pullman car, and that was the last I ever saw of him.

That afternoon I went to see my good friends Cecil Davis and Leland Fielden at Hydesville, and told them about the morning’s fiasco. By then the weather had eased, and we decided to go to Fernbridge and snag the abandoned tackle bag off the river bottom, which we did. That evening, I stuffed the salvaged flask of whiskey in my shirt, and the three of us went to the movies in Fortuna. After the movies, we went into the adjoining soda fountain and ordered cokes, which we surreptitiously spiked with a little whiskey. June Quigley (who married Leland a few years later) was working at the fountain, and we sat around until she closed the place, then all of us left together. I again stuffed the flask in my shirt, but when we reached the sidewalk, it slipped down through my pant leg, and shattered on the concrete. We were stunned at first, then we ran for the car, and when we reached it we started laughing. The closing scene of that eventful day is of four teenagers cruising up and down Main Street, from one end to the other and back again, laughing, laughing, laughing. And I laugh now as I tell the story.

###

The last memory of Fernbridge pool during those years harks back to 1946, when Wallie and I went gaffing there one evening — and nearly got ourselves killed.

Warden Bill “Kaler” Kaliher in uniform. Photo courtesy of William F. Kaliher Jr., via the Humboldt Historian.

At that time the river shallowed out into a riffle a short distance downstream from the bridge, on the creamery side. On this particular occasion, Wallie and I had stationed ourselves directly under the bridge, where we could see the riffle, but no game warden could flash a light on us from above. The game warden we feared and hated most was named Bill Kaliher, hut we never used Bill or “Mister” when we spoke of him, and couldn’t have spelled his name correctly. To us he was simply “Kaler,” a name we would spit out venomously, although he had treated me very fairly when we met one time at the Weymouth summer bridge. But fears and hatred don’t go away quickly, and the basic rule remained unchanged: Don’t ever let Kaler catch you!

Not many salmon were moving that evening, although a small one that came up the riffle ventured too close to Wallie, who gaffed it right behind the head, killing the fish immediately. It didn’t even flop when he brought it in. After that we just sat and smoked and waited, but no more fish showed. Finally a car came up on the bridge slowly from the Fernbridge side and stopped directly above us. We sat quietly, and before long some men got out and stood for several minutes at the bridge railing, occasionally shining the light down on the riffle. From their talk we could tell they weren’t game wardens; they sounded a little drunk.

After a while they got back in their car and continued across the bridge, then headed toward the river bar on the Ferndale side, and turned off their lights. We knew we would see them soon, and we had no wish to share our fishing spot, bad as it was, with anybody else, so we decided to give our competitors a scare when they tried to invade our territory.

At that time I had a powerful seven-cell flashlight I’d bought before the war, and Wallie had a five-cell flashlight. We sat and waited, and sure enough, in a few minutes we heard hoots crunching on gravel across the river, then splashing as two men waded toward us. We waited until they were 20 or 30 yards away, then we both reared up, threw our lights on them and yelled as loud as we could, “Stop in the name of the law!” As we did this we ran full- speed toward them, and they hightailed out of there, heading back toward their car. We heard their gaff hooks clatter on the rocks when they threw them away. We chased them for a hundred yards or so, until they out ran us, and we were winded. Then we went back to our safe base under the bridge. There were still no fish running, and we sat there, bored.

Some time later we heard the men’s car slowly coming back across the bridge, with no lights on. It stopped above us, and the men got out and again came to the bridge railing. Suddenly, they started yelling, “Take this, Kaler, you bastard!” and they started shooting down at us. The reverberating sound of the shots was deafening. Some of the bullets hit the water and some thudded into the muddy riverbank near where we were cowering. Finally, apparently having used up their ammunition, but still screaming every obscenity they could think of at Kaler, they got back in their car and roared away. Wallie and I were scared, I mean really scared. Much later, when we were sure those wild men were long gone, we sneaked back to our car and drove home.

When Wallie and I get together, we chuckle about that crazy evening, when our efforts to drive poachers off the river came close to getting us killed. And now, with mature perspective, we agree that Bill Kaliher, the game warden with a mission, did a pretty respectable job. When you live in his shoes as we did for those few minutes, you learn to see the man in a different light.