Klamath fishing memories

Chiloquin man recalls the good old days at favorite fishing holes

By LEE JUILLERAT
H&N Regional Editor

January 28, 2009

Cole

Decades ago, Robert “Clinker” Cole spent spring days at favorite fishing holes snagging tchwam and kuptu, names he and other Klamath Indians used for Lost River and shortnosed suckers.

It was fun and productive — and resulted in many good meals.

“When I was a kid,” says the 65-year-old Cole, “they was so thick that all you could see was fins across the river.”

By himself or with friends, Cole caught suckers by the hundreds in Crooked Creek, the mouth of the Williamson River and the Sprague River between Beatty and Chiloquin, especially near the former Chiloquin Dam. They were plentiful enough that he and others stashed salt and pepper shakers in riverside bushes.

“We’d catch those fish, build a fire and cook ’em up,” he recalls, adding with a light laugh, “We never took food with us, but we always had lunch.”

Cole bristles when he hears suckers referred to as “trash fish.” He says that by whatever name, the fish — like salmon and trout — were an important food source.

He’s watching efforts to rebuild sucker populations to Klamath Basin streams and Upper Klamath Lake with interest, hope and doubt.

“I’m really kind of skeptical, but I’m hopeful my grandchildren will see them like I did. All I can remember is the plenty of fish we had.”

H&N photo by Lee Juillerat
Clinker Cole hopes to some day use the gaff hook he’s making to catch Lost River and shortnose suckers.

Born at the agency

Cole, who was born at the Klamath Agency, learned to fish for suckers and trout from his father, Edward “Eddie” Raymond Cole. His father specialized in gaffing suckers or, more preferably, rainbow trout, from perches at the Chiloquin Dam.

“He’d sit hours on hours and he’d watch. He just sat there like a pelican, waiting,” remembers Cole, who says other Klamaths called his father “The Black Pelican.” He gaffed fish in mid-air while they were trying leap over the dam, and took pride on spearing them in the head so their meat wasn’t damaged.

Fishing in the ’50s

As a boy in the 1950s, Cole and friends took some of their catch to tribal elders. From those elders, as from his mother, Florence Shadley Cole, and grandmother, Edith Jackson Cole, he learned preparation methods.

Historically, generations of Klamaths mostly sun-dried or smoked sucker, also known as mullet. But they also were fried, canned, baked, and Cole’s favorite, boiled.

“I didn’t use a lot of seasoning because you lose the taste,” he says, telling how his family made soup and boiled the heads, a tasty delicacy because of the tchwam’s cheeks were surprisingly meaty.

He describes the taste as unique, explaining, “How do you describe something when you can’t compare it to anything else? All I can say is: good.”

Side Bars

Love of fishing runs in the Cole family

Robert “Clinker” Cole says when his father, Edward “Eddie” Raymond Cole, was a young boy, his teachers knew when fish were running because he was absent from school.

There were different seasons for the runs of different fish, and Cole says three- or four-week long mullet/sucker runs began in March.

He usually snagged fish, casting out large triple hooks attached to sinkers. When the sinker hit, he yanked hard, hoping to snag fish that typically ranged from 8 to 18 pounds. Few people used bait, and those that did used crawdad.

Non-Indians, Cole remembers, used conventional sinkers, but he and his friends used what was free and available, things like railroad spikes and discarded spark

plugs. At low water, especially near the former Chiloquin Dam, he and others would collect hooks, lines, weights and other “hardware” lost during the fishing season.

He last fished for mullets in the early 1980s when the Klamath Tribes asked tribal members to quit. In the early 1990s, the shortnosed and Lost River suckers were placed on the threatened and endangered list, a status that continues.

The nickname stuck

Robert Cole doesn’t know how he got the nickname “Clinker,” only that he’s been called that since he was a young boy.

Although he was born and raised in the Chiloquin area, he spent several years elsewhere. He quit school and enlisted in the Marines at age 16.

During his enlistments he lived stateside and in the Far East, then followed a woman he married to the Midwest after his discharge.

“It didn’t suit me,” he says of why he returned to the Klamath Basin alone in the late 1960s.

Cole spent 25 years as a seasonal firefighter for the Klamath Forest Protective Association, which later became an arm of the Oregon Department of Forestry. When not working on fires he held other jobs.

With Cheryl, his wife of 35 years, he trapped muskrat and beaver, and, later, worked several years as surveillance specialist at Kla-Mo-Ya Casino until retiring about four years ago.

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