The Writings of LaVarr B Webb
Utah's Dixie gets hot in the summer--110 degrees some days. The deeper holes of North Creek and the Virgin River were, and I guess still are, a joy in the summer to small boys. North Creek heads up on Kolob, makes it's way across the Kolob Plateau into Zion Park, cuts its way down, down, down through the Navajo Sandstone formation, gnawing like a hungry, but patient, dog, carving rooms, slippery slides, and vertical falls within the vastness of the multi-colored rock, then it flows out into a very narrow canyon with sandstone walls many hundreds of feet high, framing, generally, a blue, blue sky, a blazing sun, and, sometimes, towering, growling, thunderheads. Then the creek heads down canyon, spreading out into a thin, very transparent sheet, dropping over minute one fourth to one half inch water falls, washing at the roots of tall fir trees, shrubs, wild flowers, and grass, then coming together to rush down solid sandstone chutes into intricate solid sandstone pools, carved, again, by the pervasive water.
A few miles downstream, the water slows down, and works its way around and over boulders of all shapes and sizes. The boulders protect a very unique fish that swims like a trout, darts back and forth through the water like a trout, and, except for its mouth, is shaped like a trout. We called those fish rock suckers. They had a mouth shaped like the business end of a vacuum cleaner, and they grazed over the moss and algae covered rock like cows cropping grass in a meadow. When frightened, those fish would disappear, slithering under rocks, and hiding until bottom crawling, nude little boys went away.
That was my first introduction to fishing. As I stretched out and pulled myself with my arms through the clear water, I noticed the fish sneaking under the rocks. Sometimes I would see their tails sticking out, waving back and forth in the current like tillers on small boats. It was only natural that I would try to catch them, and soon I found it relatively easy to thrust my hand under a rock and grasp a slithery,
slippery fish.
We tried catching them with a bent pin tied to a piece of string, with a worm or a chunk of bread for bait. The fish seldom went for the worm, and the bread fell off the hook soon after it hit the water, so we always ended up fishing with our hands. I had one problem though. Sometimes, as I clutched for a fish, my hand closed around an insect larvae--a hideous bug that we called a water scorpion. Oftimes, it would attach itself to the back of my hand, and crawl with prickly clawed feet up my arm, leaving behind two obvious pin prick trails. When I found that creepy, crawlly bug in my hand or crawling up my arm, I always yelled and tried to brush it away, but many times it would cling until I found a sharp stick or stone, and scraped it off.
One hot summer day around 1927, about a half of a dozen of we Virgin City boys had been up on North Creek floundering around in the cool water. We had caught quite a few fish ranging in size from eight to fourteen inches, and we had strung them on willow poles. We were trudging down the hot, dusty road, in our overalls, with no shirts, and bare feet, with our fish dangling from the willow poles slung over our backs, and looking like escapees from a Mark Twain classic, when a big black car pulled up in front of us and stopped. A woman climbed out of the car and asked us if she could take our picture. Of course we were shy, but we posed like a bevy of Huck Finns, and she got her picture. Now, as I look back, I wish I could see that picture. I was proud of that catch.
