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Chapter 2 Uses of endangered fish "Don't you know what a whitefish (Colorado squawfish) is? If you don't know what an 01' whitefish is, then you don't know much about fish. They're just like halibut." - Bill Allen, ex-Browns Park rancher While not all of the interviewees agreed with Bill Allen's culinary compari- son between Colorado squawfish and halibut, many acknowledged that they commonly ate the Colorado squawfish and other endangered fish. In addition to eating the fish, some upper basin residents even sold the fish and sometimes used them for fertilizer and animal feed. Of the four endangered fish, the Colorado squawfish was often the pre- ferred species for table fare, although some residents expressed preference for razorback suckers and bony tail chubs. Bill Allen (Vernal, Utah) tells about his preference for Colorado squawfish or "whitefish," as they were commonly called: "We'd get some whitefish once in a while, and that was a big treat when we'd catch a whitefish. They was a bet- ter fish, better eating." Compared to the razorback sucker, humpback chub and bony tail chub the Colorado squawfish was reported to have fewer and bigger bones, making it more edible. Jim Buffham (Maybell, Colo.) recalls what made a "whitefish" (Colorado squawfish) better eating then other native fish: "They were a good fish. See the problem with these squawfish (bony tail and/or roundtail chubs) and suckers and roundtails, they were so full of bones that you couldn't get the bones out of there to get the meat off of them. "You could take the (whitefish) bones right out of them. They were big bones. The squawfish (bony tail and/or roundtail chubs) and suckers had real fme bones and full of them, all through the meat. Pert near everybody fried the whitefish. You could get the bones out of them." Undoubtedly, the size of the Colorado squawfish contributed to its popular- ity. Some seniors recalled cutting steaks off of large Colorado squawfish. Here Buffham tells of such an incident with a 3D-inch Colorado squawfish caught in the Yampa Canyon around 1929: "They put it in a skillet and fried it. But they just cut through the back bone and just cut slices like that off it. The fish was that big, and it was just like a steak." While looking at a photograph of the 25-pound Colorado squawfish he caught in 1937, Dale Stewart (Vernal, Utah) reminisced about the fish's food value: "... you can see how you can cut steaks off that thing. I remember a fish like that really was a harvest, and it produced not just one meal, but quite a few meals for the family." Max Stewart (Vernal, Utah), Dale's brother, recalls the meat his father would eat from large Colorado squawfishes' heads: "Most people would cut their (Colorado squawfish) heads off and throw them away. My dad would take