Those were the days, my friends

It's true confession time. Those years between the ages of 11 and 35 are difficult for me to recall because I was a gluttonous angler.

I was mired in the first two phases of trout fishing. Lots of fish and big ones, and the bigger the better. Bragging-size fish made me feel good, and I'm ashamed to admit it but that's how it played out back in those days many years ago.

The first stage was to catch as many trout as possible. The second phase was to catch the largest possible trout. So, there I stood in my olf Hodgman waders: wanting to catch bunches of lots of big salmon or trout.

The photo above is just typical of some browns we used to catch.

These were big fish, and they were so plentiful in the 1960s and early 1970s that it was very easy to catch
Doing so was easy. Much too easy for a good fisherman like I was back in the day.

No brag, just fact: I was a very good stream fisherman. I could catch fish, lots of them and some very big ones, when no one else was doing any good. My methods were 100 percent legal, and the difference between me and 99 percent of the other anglers on our rivers was I knew the river intimately, paid attention to locations of holding fish, tried new areas on a regular basis and learned to obtain the best drift to work my fly to big fish.

That's easy to say but much more difficult than it sounds. That's where the skill level worked in my favor.

My vision was excellent in those days. Spotting tiny seams of current, and made putting the fly to the fish on the first cast every time, and an unspooked fish often hit the first time you cast to it. My method made getting close and undetected by the fish possible. Conquering that part made my presentation easy.

Spring and fall steelhead? No problem. Fall brown trout with fish to 15 pounds? It was as simple as sitting down in an easy chair. Chinook and coho salmon? No sweat. Lake trout were even available in the Leland River in those early years, and until they shut the river down to fall fishing, it was possible to easily catch a five-fish limit without a problem.

Mind you, 35-45 years ago there were far more of all these grand game fish, and before you think I was a game hog by bragging about my exploits and limit catches, consider this: Ninety-five to 99 percent of the time I didn't keep a trout or salmon. All these big fish were released. It was almost like a personal ego stroke.

The fishing back then was nothing short of wonderful.

Everything was hooked, fought hard and fast, and was quickly released. The fishing seemed so easy, especially after fishing every day, that in many cases while guiding anglers, I'd go looking for more fish for my clients. It was an excuse that allowed me to look for the hardest fish to catch.

My idea was to find a salmon or trout buried back in under a log jam, behind a large rock, tucked under a nasty sweeper, and those were my daily challenges. Fish out in the open on spawning beds offered little challenge and I'd put my clients on them. I wanted my fish to have all the odds stacked in their favor, and then if it was possible to catch one, it became a feat that made me feel good.

That was the challenge. Going after the most  difficult fish in the river became a part of almost every day of guiding. Often, my clients would ask if they could come along, hoping to learn something else that might make them more successful.

The fish in those days, and especially before 1974 when the DNR put in their fish harvest weir on the lower Platte River, the runs of fish into the Platte were simply incredible. There was a bonanza of salmon and trout available to anglers that simply staggered the imagination. Most people who fished back then were content to snag fish in the deep holes, and most never  found scads of big fish in small pockets of water.

Today's anglers have trouble contemplating the vast number of fish available in most streams during that era. To say the rivers were almost awash with fish wouldn't be too much of an exaggeration.

There were days in the late 1960s and early 1970s when a limit (five fish daily at that time) of big brown trout were possible for at least 30 days. The males were golden brown with great hooked jaws, and those males were often mistaken for carp by clueless anglers. Seldom would they be set straight because we were running a guide service in those  days, and the location of such fish was important to us.

One spot I never told people about featured a sweeper that had toppled into the river. The tip of the tree almost touched the far bank, and the current had dug a two-foot-deep hole under the tip. Every brown trout in the area wanted to spawn in that spot, and since it was so snaggy, most people got up on the bank and walked around it.

Seven days in a row would produce a limit  of returned fish, and they ran from seven to 15 pounds each. Not convinced?

The Platte River had a run of fall-spawning rainbows. They spawned in only two spots, and I knew where those areas were. The males would be 22 to 24 inches long and weighed 12-14 pounds. I tried to convince the Cadillac DNR fisheries biologist that they existed, and he told me they were salmon.

The fall-spawning rainbows just disappeared after the lower DNR weir was installed.

I caught a spawning male and female the next day, which was my day offm abd carried them up to a 100-gallon cooler filled with cold river water in my car. I drove both fish to Cadillac. I had to shame the biologist to get him off his can and out to my car, and asked him to pick them up, one at a time.

Any pressure on the hen's belly produced a stream of golden orange eggs, and the male would produce a steady spurt of milt. He then wanted to know where they were being caught and I refused to tell him. I told him it was his business to get out into the field, and learn what was going on. I felt I'd given him enough clues over the length of time it took me to convince him  that I'd found something very special .

I once was hunting grouse near Otter Creek, just a few miles north of the Platte River mouth, and found that tiny stream full of salmon. It had been open to fishing for years but when I told the biologist about it, the creek was closed the next year. It was too small to fish but snaggers and spearers had  a great time after it was closed to legal legal angling.

The nearby Betsie River was amply supplied with big brown trout runs, and a favorite spot then was at the upstream end of the US-31 bridge south of Benzonia and on the north side of the river. Brown trout held there from late August or early September through November, and most people walked right past them as they hurried upstream toward the old Homestead Dam.

It's not that the upstream area held any more fish. It's just that this was where other people were fishing, and anglers, being gregarious folks, gravitated to areas frequented by many other anglers.

We were always content to take the path least traveled, the one that no one else fished because they didn't know it held fish. As a guide, it was my place to educate them … after they paid the daily guide fee.

The fall months from early October through November provided a smorgasbord of brown trout and salmon and steelhead action. Most of my anglers in those days could care less about catching browns, or fall steelhead that followed the salmon upstream to feed on free-drifting eggs, or the sporadic fall-spawning rainbow trout.

They wanted salmon, and there was no shortage of chinook and coho salmon in those days. I could walk people into different areas every day, and they could catch a limit. In fact, some found this fishing too easy and wanted a greater challenge. That's when I began sharing my passion for a fishing challenge with other people, and it was great fun.

Less anyone think I'm making this up there are still some photos in my files of those bygone days when salmon and trout were so plentiful that it sent a fishing guide looking for a greater fishing challenge.

I experienced something that was wondrous and exciting for 10 years, but when the allure of massive catches and 100 percent release began to pale, it was time to shift into the third stage of trout fishing: where the challenge and the leveling of odds began to fall in favor of the game fish.

Now, I still seek that ultimate challenge. And like those outdoor magazine art directors and editors I dealt with years ago often said: "I'm not sure what I want but I'll recognize it when I see it."

I now recognize that what we had 35-45 years ago was something very special, and if one is lucky, may experience it once in their lifetime. Those truly were unforgettable days.

A hot fishing method

I knew that hole, and it held a big log that had toppled into the river years before, become waterlogged, and kept sinking closer to bottom. I'd lost many flies to that submerged log over the years.

Brown trout like this are common catches with this fishing method.

This man, if nothing else, was methodical. Each cast was made to a certain portion of the hole, and he'd hit that mark with regularity. The fly would start to swing on a tight line in the current, and he would strip in three feet of fly line with each pull, and after several pulls, he would roll cast to get the fly in the air, false-cast it twice, and bang out another cast to the same exact location.
He would make three to five casts to the same spot, take two steps downstream, and start over again with a perfect cast and the fast, hard strips of the line and then another cast.

It made my arm and shoulder hurt. I knew this method worked because the former owner of The Troutsman in Acme — Kelly Galloup — wrote a book on the topic.

He stressed reading the water, fishing water that should hold big trout, and use large streamers. Some of these flies were big enough for saltwater use but they produced big trout.

The method consists of picking each hole apart with several casts to the same area, and then slowly cover all the water. If nothing happens, choose a different streamer and work down through the area again or try another hole or run.

Strip line hard & fast.

The success of this method relies on precision casting, putting the fly near a big fish, and make long and hard strips of the fly line to make the fly appear to be some type of forage fish trying to get away.

It's like running from a bear or a mean dog. It triggers the animal to attack, and for trout it can mean making the fish feel like a hefty meal is getting away. Sometimes the wake of a big fish homing in on the fly can be easily seen.

The strike is hard and ferocious. Sometimes the trout is hooked and often it is not. A hit between line strips can leave the fly hanging for an instant in the current as the hand reaches forward for another line haul. This means a fish can hit, and the fly line slips through the hands, and the fish is never hooked. Stuff happens!

This man was accomplished at  using this technique, and it appeared his back, shoulder and arm muscles were finely tuned and accustomed to the cast, strip, strip, strip, strip, strip, roll cast, two false casts, and more rapid line strips.

The guy could drop the fly near shore if need be, behind a cedar sweeper, or near the head or tail of a deep pool. His shoulders had to be fit to keep this up, non-stop, for hours on end. The man was like a fly-casting machine. He never appeared to tire nor did he pause to shrug the kinds from his shoulders and back.

I watched him land two browns in the 18 to 20-inch range from a stretch of water that is heavily fished. The first fish came from under the end of a sweeper, and sitting on a side hill 50 yards away, I could see the wake of the brown closing on the rapidly departing streamer.

Read the water, fish where big fish should hold, & try this method.

It hit, the rod tip arched back, and the fish was on. He played the fish hard and fast, knew how to break the fish's will, and he never took the trout from the water. He reached down with a hemostat, and twisted the fly free. The brown swam back home under the sweeper to safety.

The next hour he hooked a larger fish by swimming a big streamer through a deep hole and stripping the fly in hard and fast. He was midway through a line strip when the brown hammered the fly, and again he triggered the strike at exactly the right moment.

The brown half-jumped once, wallowed for a moment, and bored away on a 25-yard upstream run, rose to the surface, and splashed around. The fish turned, headed downstream past the angler, and he followed, staying close to the fish.

He landed it, and the big fly hung from the lip of the brown trout like a half-eaten sandwich. The two hours made my shoulders hurt thinking about making so many repetitious casts, but the method works during the summer months.

It's a method that should be in every angler's bag of tricks, but truth be told, most anglers aren't used to working that hard for their trout. For them that likes it, a huge streamer fished fast and hard is the only way to fish. But, it is hard work, and make no mistake about it.

It's too mechanical and too much work to suit me. I've caught lots of trophy browns, and don't need to work that hard to catch another that would be released. Besides, it's my choice to fish at my own pace, pause to watch a beaver swim by or to study the hatches.

My gift to younger anglers is to let them have this method. I'm more interested in a different kind of challenge, and one that's easier on an old man.

TresAmigos: Fly-FishingGuides

Those anglers who began steelhead fishing in the last several years missed some of the finest river fishing ever seen back in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Good numbers of steelhead were being planted all around the state, and the Betsie and Platte rivers offered great sport that was certainly was as good as it could ever be.

There was some natural steelhead reproduction 40 years ago, and the DNR was planting fish as well. The number of anglers who knew how to catch steelhead were few, and the fish numbers were very high.

My guiding career began in 1967, and brother George joined me in guiding fly fishermen to salmon, steelhead and broad-shouldered brown trout. John McKenzie became the third member of Tres Amigos, and we cut a wide swath through runs of spring and fall-spawning salmonids.

Left-right: George Richey, John McKenzie and Dave Richey — the Tres Amigos — years later.

Snagging was rampant  in those days, but not for us. We fished with No. 4, 6 and 8 single-hook flies, and it may sound like bragging but it's not: we were good anglers and guides, and there was no need to snag fish. We fair-hooked fish on a regular basis. The sheer numbers of fish meant if we spooked fish in one spot, a short hike upstream or down would show us other willing fish. Spook one, and it was easy to find others in different locations.

The steelhead runs were huge in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and I can remember days on the Little Manistee River when we could hook 30 steelhead in a day. Not all fish were landed, but George and John tied the flies we used while I handled the guide bookings for all three of us.

We were a busy bunch, and were on the river every day. We knew where the salmon, steelhead or browns would be found from day to day, and we had little competition. We came and went, and sometimes Tres Amigos were all on the same stream, and at times we would be spread out across three different rivers. We'd compare notes at night, and decide who would fish where the next day.

John, 13 years younger than George and I, was a good-looking guy. I often paired him with husband-and-wife teams or father-and-daughters, and his great talent — besides catching fish — was being able to teach people how to fish. He was patient, and clients easily learned from him.

George and I were older, and by nature, seemed to attract the older anglers or the chief person who brought a crew up to fish with us. We treated everyone the same; we'd fish from sun-up to sun-down if clients wanted to spend that much time on the river, and we cleaned and froze fish at night and would be up early the next day.

Guiding fishermen was a way of life for Tres Amigos, and we were very good at what we did. We could spot fish, coax anglers into putting the fly in exactly the right spot so it would be scratching gravel when it passed the fish. They would hit, and we'd have a big fishy battle on our hands.

John McKenzie unlooks spring steelhead for client.

One thing captivated the three of us: putting people into big fish for the first time. The smiles that crossed their face when they fought a 15-pound steelhead for the first time; got hooked into a 30-pound chinook salmon; or was trying to land a big hook-jawed male brown trout weighing 12 to 18 pounds. It's been many years since those faces broke out into a smile, but we vividly remember most of them.

There wasn't anything we wouldn't do for each other. John was known to tie flies by hand on the river bank if we ran out. George was always there to coax anxious anglers into following a big fish downstream, and I was the guy that made it all work with the precision of a fine Swiss watch. All of us had a job to do, and we greeted each peach-colored dawn with a smile on our face and a jump in our step.

For 10 years we were Tres Amigos — three friends — who made a living in the best possible way — being outdoors, on the river, and with a client holding tight to a big fish jumping in the river.

We often went without eating, found ourselves upside down in the river current trying to net a client's fish for them, and we looked out for each other. We also paid attention to our clients, catered to their every wish that was ethical and legal, and we coaxed more out of our client's skill levels than they knew they possessed.

George Richey nets a 25-pound chinook salmon in fast water.

We put people into fall-spawning rainbows that had tiny tails, fat waists, and a 23-inch fish would weigh 13 pounds. The browns, especially the big males, were a golden-bronze with big spots; the steelhead were mint-silver and high jumping; the chinook salmon were avid tackle busters, and some mighty battles would cover a half-mile of river. The coho salmon were seldom finicky about a fly: put it to them at their level, and they would hit.

It was a magical 10 years, and now brother George is gone. John McKenzie still avidly fishes, and he and I occasionally take trips down memory lane. We were there for the finest salmon and trout fishing this state has ever seen, and we pride ourselves on being the first river fly-fishing guides during those halcyon days.

And that, my friends, was pretty heady stuff years ago and it's something we'll never forget.

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors

Uncommon Fishing Experiences

Strange things happen while fishing, and many are remembered long after a limit catch has been caught, bragged about and eaten.

It was about this time of year 30 years ago when I was trolling Manistee Lake near Filer City with brother George, and Randy Colvin of Flint. We were trolling X-4, X-5 and U-20 FlatFish at putt-putt speeds.

I was trolling a U-20 silver FlatFish off the starboard side, Colvin was pulling a U-20 in grey-pearl off the port side, and George was using some weight and was fishing a chartreuse with red spot U-20 right behind the boat while running the outboard motor.

An against all-odds catch

It was a cold and blustery day when Colvin had a jarring strike. I began reeling my line in immediately when I felt the boat rock as he set the hook, and his line broke from a too-tight drag and too much hook-set. I'd made about 10 turns on the spinning reel handle when my rod tip shot down, and I was into a jumping fish that cleared the water behind the boat.

George reeled up, Randy reeled in his broken line, and that steelhead and I had a good battle. I gradually worked him out into deeper water, and soon he was swimming in circles 10 feet below the boat. I eased him to the surface where George slid a net under the fish.

No big deal here. But imagine our surprise when we learned that one small treble hook point of my lure went through the line-tie of Colvin's FlatFish. The odds of such a thing happening are well off the charts.

He howled that it was his fish, and me being a reasonable gent, suggested that his over-zealous hook-set and my finely timed retrieve was what led to my cleverly inserting a hook point of my lure through the line tie of his lure. Thus, any reasonable person should know that not only did I land the fish but also gained a new fishing lure.

I relented, after further reasonable thought, and gave him back his lure. I kept the fish. That seemed only fair to me.

Hooking the same big Chinook salmon three times

Another time, during my river guiding career from 1967 through 1976, I had occasion to fish the Betsie River with a fly rod and wet flies for chinook salmon. My clients had caught a bunch of fish, and being thoroughly tuckered out from running up and downstream after fish, had pulled up stakes after two days and went home.

A huge king was spotted upstream from a tree that had toppled into the water, and he was holding court with a big hen. I hooked that old boy once, and he ripped and snorted downstream, tangling my line in the fallen tree branches, and broke off.

I fished elsewhere for an hour, went back to the big king, and he was back out guarding the redd. I changed fly colors, rolled the dark fly in front of his nose, and he darted out to grab it. I set the hook, he uncorked a tremendous leap that landed him in the tree branches again. The line broke like sewing thread.

Two hours passed before I stopped by to pay him another visit. There he lay, alongside the nearly spent female, and they rolled up on their sides in unison, she discharging a stream of golden eggs while he let loose a cloud of white milt. They spawned until her eggs were exhausted and he could only muster one tiny puff of milt.

They had ended their spawning chores, and death would soon follow. I eased into the river again, made one cast, and the big male moved forward to intercept it. I set the hook, set it again, and literally forced him across the surface toward me. He slipped past me as I steered him clear of the tree branches and into the open river.

He headed downstream like a barge drifting out of control, and I followed him as fast as humanly possible. He rolled to the surface, thrashed around, turned sideways to the current, and he let the swift water carry him down to a deep hole. I knew the hole was clean of debris, and carried the fight to the now sluggish fish.

It was perhaps not the most noble end to his life, but he had fulfilled his destiny and would soon die, his carcass tumbling end over end downstream until it lodged in a log jam. I eased him toward shore, skidded his massive head up on shore, picked him up by the tail and it was over.

That fish, two hours later, weighed an honest 38 1/2 pounds on certified scales, a major catch on a fly and fly rod and 10-pound tippet. It's said that salmon are born orphans and die childless.

And that is a true fact, and I'd like to think this great fish (the largest Chinook salmon I've landed on a fly rod) graced my life and died in an honorable fight rather than succumbing to the wasting-away process that befalls all salmon. He blessed my life with his presence and his strength, and that memory will live with me until my death.

Three big brook trout from Algonquin Provincial Park

One last topic concerns a trip to Ontario's Algonquin Provincial Park for brook trout. My wife Kay and I hiked into a sparkling little lake as I carried a canoe on my shoulders. We began a slow tour along the first dropoff out from shore, and cast copper-color Devle Dogs toward shore.

Kay hooked the first brook trout on one of those Eppinger spoons, and it fought a stubborn battle on six-pound line, and I eventually netted a 5 1/2-pound lake brookie. It had broad shoulders abd within five minutes she caught another fish of about the same size.

Two hours later we pulled up to a big boulder along shore, and got out of the canoe to stretch our legs. My third cast produced a jarring strike, and a few minutes later I eased a five-pound brook ashore.

We fished the rest of the day without a strike but the size of those three brook trout have seldom been equaled elsewhere. It produced wonderful memories we'll both remember for many years.

Uncommon Fishing Experiences ((tag: Dave Richey, Michigan, Outdoors, brook trout, canoe, Chinook salmon, Devle Dogs, FlatFish, fly fishing, trolling))

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors

Hunting Pre-Rut Bucks

Pre-rut deer are like a walking billboard. They advertise themselves in many ways, and savvy hunters may want to bone up on some of the pertinent data that bucks leave behind as they travel around their home turf.

Deer scrapes are where you can find them during the pre-rut. Those scrapes found along field edges often are "boundary scrapes" that mark the edge of a deer's normal range. They are usually small, and somewhat regularly spaced along a wooded field edge.

A deer will open them up, and may never return again. They serve little purpose other than to mark their personal range. I've seen cases where 10 or 12 scrapes will follow a field edge, and once opened, they are never touched again. A string of boundary scrapes should not be confused with a scrape line or a rub line.

When do bucks visit hot scrapes?

The really hot and active scrapes may be visited several times every day, and most of them will be found in fairly thick, heavy cover although some of the largest scrapes I've ever seen were located in a grove of sparse pines.

The scrapes in that area were all as big as a washtub, and every one had fresh urine, a hoof print and antler tine marks in them. Each one had a licking branch directly above the scrape, and most of the nearby pine trees were nearly girdled by the rakings of a large buck. Know this that a really big and hot buck may yank the licking branch down but I've had great success by tying a new limb in its place

I hunted that area several times over two years, and eventually the big rubs and scrapes disappeared. The buck was working on trees 10 to 12 inches in diameter. It would take a huge buck to do that kind of damage, and I never heard of such a buck being taken and it's likely he died of old age. He may never have been seen.

Some tips on scrapes and what they can tell you

Some of what follows may seem elementary but it's important stuff to know. Fresh and actively maintained scrapes are round or oval in shape, and sometimes one will overlap into another scrape. The ground is pawed away until all grass, leaves and twigs are scattered away.

Nearby trees often feature smooth bark but I've seen many rubs on cedar and pine trees as well as popple, tag alder and maple.

A scrape offers great indications about when the buck is visits and works the scrape, and the clues are easy to spot. Most, if not all, of the pawing will be done in one direction. The dirt, grass, leaves and twigs will pile up at one end of the scrape.

If the dirt is piled up at the end of the scrape closest to thick cover, it usually means the buck is visiting it in late afternoon or early evening while leaving his bedding cover. Dirt piled at the end closest to open feeding fields often are visited in the early morning as the buck heads for heavy cover to bed down.

New or old? Good question, and easily answered. Some scrapes are made, and then abandoned. Perhaps the animal was spooked by a hunter, and went elsewhere. Active scrapes are damp with urine, and often feature one or more hoof-prints and/or antler tine marks.

Old and abandoned scrapes fill in with grass and fallen leaves. An active scrape will be cleaned of all debris once to several times a day, because this is where the buck wants to meet an estrus doe. Of course, bucks and does often meet in open fields or woodlands but the initial contact usually occurs near an active scrape.

Scrape hunting can be exciting

Watching a buck work a scrape is really neat. A young buck knows he is supposed to be doing something but he doesn't have a clue. A buck with some age will often wind-check the scrape from downwind, and if it appears to have been visited by an estrus doe, the buck will tend the scrape.

He will paw the dirt, nibble on the overhead licking branch, rub his forehead scent glands on the overhead branches, urinate in the scrape, paw and stomp it into mud, and hang around nearby. This is when a hunter may get a chance for a shot if he is positioned properly.

Some does often hang close by waiting for the buck, and sometimes, the buck will follow the doe's trail. Such tending bucks often give a low grunt as they follow the hot trail. Bucks usually wind-check active scrapes 20-30 yards downwind of the scrape. The hunter, if he sits 40 yards downwind of the scrape can often  intercept the buck coming through and wind-checking as he walks through the arera

Scrapes full of debris are not being used. Scrapes can go from hot to cold overnight, and a previously active scrape that shows no use provides hunters with another important clue. An active scrape that suddenly shows no use means just one thing: the rut has started.

Rut hunting is a fascinating time to be afield but remember the hours of 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. are mid-day hours that bucks prefer. The bucks can appear at any time during the day, and watching a randy old buck hot on the trail of a young doe gives us all hope. Maybe, just maybe, she will lead him past our stand.

One can only hope. Waylaying a nice buck near a scrape does happen but the hunter must always be ready. Big bucks rarely offer a second chance.

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors