TrishadaFisha brought fishing and family together

Notes come from around Chicago outdoors and beyond.

Patricia "TrishadaFisha" Cole's quick wit comes at you like a quip punch by a nimble standup comic.

Talking about her grandkids, she said, "They are all cuckoo for Coco puffs for fishing."

Say what?

Then she inundates me with photos and stories of the fishing exploits of her 12 grandchildren. She also has two great grandchildren.

Then along comes something that floored Cole from one of them. A granddaughter, Nadia Cole-Whalum, penned "Girls Fish Too!," a children's book with a point. The illustrations are by Navi Robins.

The story is Nadia and her grandma, Trish-da-Fisha, trying to teach a group of girls how to fish and lead them to win a fishing contest. Along the way they overcome insults and disdain from boys.

"Men cannot stand seeing girls and women outfishing them," Cole said.

She has a point.

But at the same time don't read Cole wrong, she understands far more men fish than women. And she was willing and privileged to learn from lakefront legends.

"2005 was my introduction to salmon fishing by Dax, Danilo, God rest his soul," she emailed.

What kicked in her love of lakefront salmon fishing came from a coindence that led to meeting Danilo "Dax" Xhamilton, the late South Side lakefront fishing legend.

While driving along South Lake Shore Drive she said, "I saw this man riding [his bicycle] with a big old fish. I asked, `Where do you fish?' The guy said, `Go out to the end of the pier and ask for Dax.' "

She followed that advice. Cole found Dax on the 63rd Street pier. His advice paid off with her first salmon. He gave her a Little Cleo (a popular salmon spoon), the one she called Lady Bug, yellow with orange dots.

"He told me tie this on here," she said. "I had a coho. He had a Chinook. That was enough to get me. Then Eddie Hudson and [the late] Sean Buckner were the ones who taught me."

Hudson is an artist/lakefront angler. Buckner was another lakefront great. The names, such as Ray Hinton, keep coming.

Cole started calling herself TrishadaFisha in 2005. Her youngest daughter Jennifer even had a hat made for Cole at the old Evergreen Plaza.

"When I pass away, she is the one who is going to get that hat," Cole said.

There's a background for a fishing/teaching grandmother.

"I had no idea she was writing a story about fishing with her grandmother," Cole said. "It is phenonmenal to write. She is not the talkative one [of the grandkids], she is the quiet one. That is some kind of honor.

"I was completely surprised, I had no idea at all. Total surprise. I was speechless."

I doubt that.

"The writing ability popped out in her," Cole said. "Rebekah is working on an animation."

Nadia's mother, Rebekah Cole, also writes in a family where writing runs deep. Patricia's father Henry Markham Mitchell lived with his family in the early days of the then Mother Cabrini project and started the monthly newspaper, "The Cabrini Observer." He hoped it would bring together the different races and nationalities there, according to his obituary om the Chicago Daily News.

Cole has a favorite part in "Girls Fish Too!," the kitchen scene when Nadia tells her grandma about about a fishing contest.

" `Grandma, guess what!' she cried. `There's a fishing contest for kids next month! We can participate and win the prize! I know we can!' "

Nadia had already been taught to fish by her grandmother. Nadia's friends are excited but a little dubious since they don't know fishing. But Nadia assures them, "She'll be our coach. She has won many contests. She is so good that people call her Trish-da-fisha!"

Cole finished second in one of Henry's Sports and Bait salmon tournaments, earning having a medal around her neck and a fishing rod.

"I was privileged to know and love Henry, who always warmly welcomed me at the bait shop" she said. "It was Henry who strongly encouraged me to enter his salmon tournament."

The late Henry Palmisano was one of the brothers who ran Henry's, Chicago's late great bait and tackle shop in Bridgeport. Cole would occasionally be in the Sun-Times for her fishing exploits.

Asked what kind of angler her Nadia was, Cole said, "She's an avid fisherman. She loves fishing. Her and her mother go out every week fishing in their private pond. [Nadia] will touch the fish and put on the bait. The only the thing I want them to learn is to fillet those bluegills."

Talking with Cole is an adventure of language and memory, sort of like remembered literary tsunami. Years and memories run together in the best way.

"Girls Fish Too!" may be ordered at Nadia's mother's site, https://rebekah-cole.square.site/product/girls-fish-too-/8, or from Amazon.