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Authors note: This story will be understood best if two housekeeping items are cleared up at the outset.

First, the term fishery as used here refers to a single combined entity: the fish resource, its environment, and the people who use the resource. It does not mean hatchery.

Second, this is not a technical paper. Much of the local information was found in the works of Humboldt authors Denis Edeline, the late M.A. Parry, Duane Wainwright, and Susie Van Kirk: these authors reported information gleaned from Humboldt County newspapers, principally the Humboldt Times and the Ferndale Enterprise.

The Beginning Years
Eel River salmon have been the Humboldt Bay Regions' premier fish from time immemorial. Salmon was a major staple of the aboriginal Wiyot Indians' diet; and when the earliest white settlements were established along the river commercial salmon fishing began almost immediately. The first extensive commercial salmon fishery on the Eel River was established in 1853 by Jesse Dungan, a successful former gold miner who had bought a 300-acre ranch in the lower Eel River valley. Other commercial salmon fishermen soon followed, often forming partnerships. Pioneer firms fishing the estuary in 1859 included Dungan & Denman, John Mosely, Martin & Plummer, Gilman & Skinner, William Ellery & Bro., Thomas Worth, Parcells & Nicholson, and Dickerman & Miller. They operated from the mouth of the river upstream to the head of tidewater-near the present Fernbridge.

In late October 1859, the editor of the Humboldt Times was immensely impressed when he toured the fish processing establishments by rowboat. The industry employed about a hundred men, he reported, and promised to contribute more than $60,000 to the county's economy during the coming year- a significant amount considering that the county population totaled about 2,700 at the time, and fishing was a sub-ordinate industry.

The editor saw plenty of fish. As he and his oarsman approached the mouth of the river, where the ocean surf was rolling in, "our eyes were greeted," he reported, "by the appearance of thousands of huge salmon leaping out of the water, as if suspecting the silent element through which they were so rapidly passing to captivity and death."

The pioneer fishermen were generally local farmers, or they obtained fishing rights from other farmers. Once structural facilities and equipment were installed and working, fishing became a part-time occupation. The annual fishing season usually lasted only three or four months each year, including time for preparation and clean-up--less when heavy autumn rains made fishing impossible, and sometimes destroyed processing plants. Except for laws in 1855 and 1859 that specified fishing seasons and landowners' rights, the industry was essentially unregulated at first. Subsequent laws further restricted where and when fishing was permitted, and the mesh size of nets: by 1887 commercial fishermen had to buy licenses. Such laws were rarely enforced, however, because Humboldt County citizens, like those in other California salmon fishing communities, considered state regulation an intrusion into a man's right to fish. An accused violator needed only to plead not guilty and demand a jury trial. Convictions were rare in those days.

Fish were commonly taken in seines more than 400 feet long and twenty-seven feet wide, which were swept through channels by crews of 10 to 14 men, and drawn ashore with their captured fish along gently sloping stream banks. Teams of horses or mules were commonly used to haul in the nets. Fishing firms were relatively independent, constructing their own storage vats and barrels for packing fish on their property from readily available seasoned spruce lumber. Salt shipped from San Francisco was the principle import of the original salmon processing plants. These firms shipped their salted fish to San Francisco via circuitous routes around or over Table Bluff to ships loading in Humboldt Bay. Later, many thousands of pounds of fresh and processed salmon were also shipped by streamers such as the Mary D. Hume directly to San Francisco from Port Kenyon, of the Eel estuary.