One of my most useful correspondents is Paul Wheeler, who has ties in this community and who as a kid in Browning for a while fed a lot of quarters into Bob Scriver’s mechanized rattlesnake. His business is property maintenance, so he gives me good advice about fixing things. Like so many of us, he loves local history and muses about how things used to be. For instance, fishing:
We must have used some sort of bait spear fishing, but I don't recall what it might have been. Was telling my uncle, there used to be a bit of spear fishing go on here years ago. In December, burbot used to spawn up all the creek tributaries on the Kootenai and out of work farmers, loggers and the like would take their pitch forks and gunny sacks and scoop them up for sale. Hard to imagine a fishery so thick that you could fish with a pitchfork, but there are pictures of it in the museum.
In my early Forest Service contracting days, we formed a loose co-op, The Kootenai Kollusion. We were tree planters, thinners and cruisers, all organized to take advantage of a common bookkeeper/tax gal and deal with workman's comp and all the millions of issues that we all hated doing individually. Another advantage is that if you ran short of work in your field, you could go plant trees or thin for awhile. Early winter was a bad time for us all and we'd frequently run into each other, fishing the Kootenai at the mouth of the Yaak. Whitefish are another winter spawner and you could see thousands of fish headed up the Yaak in early December. We looked into the possibility of getting a commercial fishing license and did. Only problem was, none of us had a clue about how to go about it. We waded around the occasionally deep mouth of the river, pounding in t posts and chicken wire, trying to make corrals and pens. Our first harvest was great. When we came back the next day, the whole works had been torn out and sunk somewhere in the Kootenai by a log that came down the Yaak. By the time we got the thing rebuilt, the spawn was over.
We smoked and dried several hundred pounds of whitefish, ate our fill and easily sold the rest. The next December, a couple of us die-hards tried it again, but our traps got taken out the same way almost immediately and we gave up without a better idea of how to be successful.
Personally, I'd love to see a few interviews with folks re fishing. I know it was my major force in life until I moved to the mountains. What else is there to do in E. Montana? I haven't seen much reference to fishing as a major subsistence to homesteaders in the area, or at least not nearly as much as hunting, but I'm guessing it must have played a considerable part.
I've seen old film of those Columbia fish, aren't they also called Grunion? The Haida Gwaii fish for Ooligan like that North of there. Candle fish. Dried you can light the tail and have light throughout the night. They use them to make this foul-smelling and tasting ooligan grease. It's a clear oil that is used as a condiment on a lot of foods. Took me a long while to get used to the taste, but it does grow on ya.
The Kootenai Kollusion co-op is still kicking. Aging hippie/back to the landers. The majority of the folks are tree planters. We still have the CO OP agricultural supply joint. They left Bonners ten or fifteen years ago after a massive fuel leak showed up. They're still a growing concern in Sandpoint though. We haven't had a food co op here for many years, but it's been replaced with the vigorous farmers market and the big co op, Azure Standard that makes regular drop offs all over the N.W. Not much need for co op's anymore.
Here’s a bear story. It was early spring on Boundary Creek which is an old road into the Continental Mine. The Continental was one of the few successful gold/silver operations in the area. That road is a marvel, built in many places on a sheer cliff. Every Spring, avalanches took the road out, or at least filled the road with rock and boulders that blocked further passage. I had a cruising contract up there and was scouting the area to see what kind of access I was going to have. All the way up the road, I had to stop, get out and roll rocks off the side of the road. I also took advantage of the area and cut firewood on the way. Coming out, I had to keep stopping again to roll more rocks because of the lower clearance from the wood load. I've always loved rock rolling, even though it's gotten me in trouble from time to time. There's just something satisfying about watching a huge rock falling, bouncing, rolling, taking out trees and starting smaller avalanches while it alters the landscape.
Anyway, I was standing on the road, not paying attention to much but the crashing rock, when I noticed a grizzly in the creek bottom looking up at the chaos I'd created. He was grazing on the new green grass poking up here and there. It's interesting watching bears eat grass. Their big heads swing ponderously back and forth, it almost reminds you of a Hoover vacuum cleaner. Step, swing, swing, step, swing, swing. I got the binoculars and settled down to watch him for awhile. After a time, he came to the cliff face and without a wasted motion, started to climb up towards the road. I had no idea bears could climb like that. It was a nearly sheer, 250'-300' climb. You hear how grizzly bears aren't very good climbers because of their claws being too long, but it appears to be limited to trees, because that cliff didn't slow him down a bit. He had all kinds of tricks up his sleeve and looked like he'd taken climbing lessons from world class climbers. One movement I'd seen rock climbers do is called "chimney mantling". It's kind of a hard maneuver to describe, but essentially it entails pulling yourself up to a ledge with your arms until you can get your feet on the same ledge. In a seeming flash he was up to the road and I was scuttling back to the safety of my truck. Paying me absolutely no mind, he turned the other way on the road and sauntered down it to a small ravine that went up the cut slope of the road and disappeared into the brush and trees. That bear looked like an absolute athlete, lithe, sinewy and strong. One of my favorite experiences ever.
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