“Between Ross [Hall] and Dad, with the cooperation of the fish and fishermen, they put this town on the [map] from a fishing standpoint. And that’s where Sandpoint got to be known.” Jim Parsons, Jr. speaking of his father, Jim Parsons, Sr., interviewed by Nancy Renk in 1996.
The big fish coming out of Lake Pend Oreille were a publicist’s dream and that dreamer was Jim Parsons, Sr. Newly home after wartime duty as a Marine Corps public relations officer, Parsons’s stories, combined with Ross Hall’s photographs, spread news of Pend Oreille’s giant Kamloop trout around the nation. Prize-winning fish, like the 37-pound Kamloop Wes Hamlet caught in 1947, kept Sandpoint in the spotlight.
