Fisherman tells all after hooking live pipe bomb from Sacramento River
SHASTA COUNTY, Calif. — When you have been a fishing guide on the Sacramento River for over 15 years, like Jon Kenyon, the chances are you’ve probably hooked everything the river can offer.
“We have caught you know things like lawn chairs and stuff like that,” said Kenyon.
On Monday, Kenyon told KRCR nothing could prepare him for what he would pull out of the water on Sunday.
“My father-in-law had the net ready and we got it up towards the boat and it looked like an anchor so we put it away and got the line up and we got it right to the boat and realized my father-in-law was like…
That’s a bomb! Get everybody to the front of the boat,” said Kenyon.
The home-made pipe bomb was reeled in near the mouth of Battle Creek (commonly known as the Barge Hole) on the Sacramento River.
Kenyon told KRCR that they pulled the device to the shoreline and waited for the Tehama County Sheriff’s Office (TCSO) to arrive.
TCSO said in a press release on Monday, during the time deputies were en route to meet Kenyon, they got a separate call of another bomb being pulled from the river.
“We saw him (another fisherman) hook something and he yelled at me, Jon we just hooked another bomb,” said Kenyon.
The Shasta County Bomb Squad later confirmed both devices to be live pipe bombs and were destroyed on site.
Kenyon thinks his run-in with the bombs could be from other fishermen trying to cut corners.
“I think that they are probably trying to blowup salmon and knocking them out and trying to take them, that’s what I think,” he said.
The Tehama County Sheriff’s Office is advising fishermen in the area to be careful saying it is unknown if other devices are concealed in the water below.
If you have any information, contact the Tehama County Sheriff’s Boating Safety Unit at (530) 529-4172. If you find a suspicious device, call 911 immediately.