A good reason to go fishing

Walleyes and brook trout make good eating for the elderly.

Fishing seems to be one of those pastimes where some people need a reason to go fishing. They need a jump-start, and oddly, since the birth of salmon fishing in this state, the reason many go is to catch big fish.

I’ve nothing against catching big fish that can stretch my line on 100-yard runs, but it’s not necessary to catch a big fish every time.

There were a few days during my 10-year guiding career chasing browns, Chinook and coho salmon, and steelhead, that things just didn’t work out right. I remember taking two gents out for spring steelhead, and both men limited out the first day and wanted a new challenge.

The river was full of suckers. Fish to six pounds, and these guys had never caught one so I asked if they thought these fish could be caught on flies.

They didn’t think so, so a friendly little wager ensued, and I caught the first sucker on a fly. It was landed, and I taught both men how to roll an orange fly along bottom. The suckers were protecting their spawning bed, and they hooked one sucker after another.

One man tossed a sucker 20 feet up the bank where it flopped around. I asked if he planned to keep that fish, and he said no. I sent him scurrying up the bank to retrieve the fish and put it back in the river. He sulked a bit, and I got him aside, and explained that his behavior only encourages others to do the same thing.

I told him those suckers hatch, grow, and get eaten by game fish such as bass, perch, muskies, northern pike, walleyes and all species of salmon and trout. I also said that spring suckers from clean water make great eating when canned and made into fish patties.

He got right into that program, and although I probably cleaned two-dozen of them for him, I was happy to do it. I didn’t mind him keeping them if they would be properly used. He also apologized for his earlier actions.

Need an excuse to go fishing? Here is one that will help the environment.

Walk some of the streams and try for stream trout. Perhaps you’ll bump into one of the Skamania steelhead that continue to pop up on rare occasions, but use the fishing trip to wade the river and fill your landing net with worm boxes, discarded line, beer cans, juice bottles and other stuff left behind by slobs.

Want another reason to go fishing? Take a kid with you. He can be young or old, a neophyte or an older and experienced angler. Choose what you both wish to fish for, and go out and enjoy the day and the outdoors. Any fish caught would be a bonus.

I have a couple of elderly ladies I share my catch with. If I know they want fish, and I hadn’t planned on keeping any, I will keep one for each of them. A channel catfish I caught last week went to a neighbor, and she was delighted with fresh fish.

I never give them more than one fish each, and sometimes I take turns giving them a fish. They know that many days I put all the fish back or keep an occasional fish for Kay and I, but this they accept because no one else they know is giving away fish.

It’s something I do that makes me feel good and makes the women feel good. Both have sons who seldom fish, and they eat what they catch, so the Good Samaritan strikes again. One lady can still clean her fish but the other cannot so I fillet, bone and skin her fish.

Some days, like yesterday or today, are wonderful days to hit the river. No need to worry about big fish or other anglers because most of the stream fishermen are now waiting for the water to cool  that will trigger other fall salmon and trout runs.

I like not having to share the water with others although I readily do so if I encounter another loner like myself. We chat, and invariably he is like me — a person happy to be able to wade a river, cast a fly or spend a few happy hours alone with the whisper of the wind, a just-right  breeze and the quiet gurgle of water washing around a sweeper and sending soft and lovely river sounds in my direction.

That is a good enough reason for me to go fishing … anytime.

George and I hammered the Chinook salmon

My late twin brother, George Richey, leads a big king to net.

Years ago we had an early cool snap, a cold rain fell, and suddenly the Betsie River was awash with fresh-run Chinook salmon. Everywhere one looked were fish moving upstream, their backs creasing the surface.

Brother George and I were fishing two small holes 30 yards apart, and he was casting a wet fly while I was pitching a copper No. 2 Mepps Anglia spinner. It was midweek, and we seemed to have the river to ourselves.

George hooked a fish on a pattern he devised for dark-water, and it was called The Crick. It was basically a black fly with a bit of color, and he was bouncing it along bottom when it stopped and the line switched sideways. There is nothing delicate about setting the hook on a big river salmon. It is a happening!

Hooking two big kings was a special treat for us.

I could hear him grunt as he muscled back to pound the hook home. I took two turns on the reel handle, and a king salmon tried mightily to wrench the rod out of my hands. I urged him into a fighting mood with a hard double hook-set, and there we stood, 20 yards apart, the Richey twins, each one tight to an angry king salmon.

My fish started downstream, and jumped almost into his back pocket, and George spun around, glared at the fish heading out into midstream as his fish ran upstream away from the splash. His fish jumped out in front of me, and we both had to get moving to avoid tangling our lines.

He shuffled upstream while I moved down, and we had the two fish separated by 20 yards when his big king swapped ends, and headed downstream behind me as I scrapped with my fish in the deep hole. I stepped backwards, stepping over his line, and then we stood there, our backs almost touching, as we tried to beat up on those fish.

“Having fun yet?” he asked, knowing I was.

“Nothing better than a 25-pound king trying to rip the rod from your hands,” I replied. “Waited a year to do this again.”

The silence of the moment was hushed by splashing fish, and then George’s fish headed upstream, and our two fish were as close together as we were, and both were struggling upstream, fighting the river current and our heavy rod pressure.

Fighting both salmon, with each going its own way, was a hoot.

“Could get a bit tricky soon,” he noted. “If both of them come down together, it will be interesting to see if we can get out of the way while keeping them separated.”

The Chinook salmon apparently read his mind or heard his voice, and like two submarines heading for two troop ships, here they came. One fish stayed deep and mine was near the surface, and I pulled from one side to upset his travel pattern. George and I always seemed to read each other’s mind, and he did the same except he pulled in the opposite direction.

The fish hit the air, both in half-hearted jumps, and it was as if we were in a ballet on water. We reacted in unison without discussing it, and his move and mine complemented the other. The kings, reacting in a somewhat predictable manner, responded in kind. This was a battle of two twin men, working on two adult Chinook salmon of equal size, and it couldn’t have been choreographed any better.

My fish cut between me and shore, spinning me around as it charged downstream. George’s fish peeled around him in midstream, and now both fish were wallowing on the surface.

My fish was just half-a-shade lighter in coloration than his but it played out faster on the spinning tackle. I led the fish to shore, grabbed it by the caudal peduncle (the wrist-like narrowing just ahead of the tail), lifted it out, reached for my long-nose pliers, and twisted the treble free and released the fish.

Tailing a big Chinook salmon is easy if you know how and hang on.

I grabbed my camera and began clicking photos of George as he landed his 25-pounder. There was a bit of color in the background, and he held his fish aloft for two or three photos.

He bent over, released the fish with the dignity it deserved after putting up a valiant fight, and we were off looking for another adventure.

Those were the days when George and I lived our lives to the fullest, guided fishermen, and traveled Michigan’s rivers together as we did everything else … together, and as a team.

Today I was on the Betsie River again, and my thoughts of George were wonderful as I looked for fish below the old Homestead Dam. I found a few fish but they weren’t hitting. The river water is still warm, and oddly enough, there were no people where I was at.

I cast to several fish but the fish were really spooky. One cast, and they would head into a timber-lined hole. The last thing they seemed interested in was flies or spinner, but it was a good day for remembering my twin brother.

I still think of him daily after almost eight years since his premature death, and although we hunted together as well, it was on those early salmon and steelhead trips that we became almost welded together, inseparable as two peas in a pod. I miss him, and just remembered this story today as I tried to recreate that day, and it’s one of my favorites.

Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

Returning to an old, favorite steelhead stream

A nice steelhead for the Old Man. One is enough for me these days.

Decades ago, there was a place on the Little Manistee River that was almost like home. It had many shallow gravel bars where steelhead spawned, and rather than charging off elsewhere, my son David and I chose to returned to my hotspot from the late 1960s.

“If that’s where you want to fish, “I’m happy to tag along. “Show me a place you haven’t showed me before.” He and I had fished a good many spots but there were a bunch he had yet to see.

So I did, and it was like going back in time. And he fell in love with it just as I did 45 years ago. No, sorry, but I’m not revealing its exact location although I can get you fairly close.

Taking a big step back in time brought us to the Little Manistee River.

The river, between the 9 Mile and 6 Mile bridge, was running low, fast and clear that day as we stepped into the river. Strongly felt was the old familiar tightening of water pressure against my legs as we began wading slowly upstream in hopes of finding a leftover steelhead or two.

We poked along slowly, easing into the current, checking out gravel bars for the dish-shaped white overturned gravel from the fanning of a hen steelhead’s tail. The bed is slightly upstream from the white gravel at the tail-end of the bed. Some people wonder why these beds are white, and the quick and easy answer is this gravel has been turned over as a hen digs her spawning redd.

David, much younger than the old man, has speed to burn. I nodded for him to charge off in his personal quest for a lively steelhead while I walked slowly, stopped often, and looked for the near-invisible shadow of a fresh hen or the darker and blockier shape of a male.

I covered 200 yards, and stood motionless, looking near a fallen log that had toppled into the river. My vision, at best, is poor but I know what to look for and quickly found it.

First came the dark shadowy shape of a male holding in slightly deeper water along the edge of the redd. The water was four feet deep here, and I studied it for 10 minutes. The trick is to locate both fish before starting to cast to them.

I just fish for male steelhead. Hooking a female can ruin the fishing.

Make a mistake at this point, and hook the female, and she is gone and the males will vanish with her. I studied the bed, both sides of it, and finally found her holding next to a log 10 feet downstream from the redd. The female was bright silver in the sunshine, and she was very close to being invisible. At first I couldn’t see her, but then I spotted her shadow, and then she became instantly visible. It’s a matter of knowing what to look for, and any skill at spotting these fish comes from many years of experience.

She was in an impossible spot to fish, even if I was stupid enough to try for her. The male held alongside the redd, and in a perfect location. My line was lengthened, and reading the current speed and depth gave me the ideal spot to cast. My orange yarn fly drifted downstream along bottom, and the fish moved away from it.

The fly was lifted out, cast again, and again the male moved aside and allowed the fly to drift past. Time after time I cast, and each time the male slid away, but he was becoming agitated, and on the 20th or 30th cast, he grabbed the fly and the hook was pounded home.

That fish ripped off on a downstream run, ran past the hen, went between two fallen logs, and wheeled in midstream, splashed out of the water in a corkscrewing jump, and ran back upstream. He took 10 yards of line upstream from me, rolled on the surface, and headed back down and turned. He bulldozed into a submerged brush pile in front of me, and in less than a second tangled my line and broke off.

I moved back up to shore, sat down, tied on another orange yarn fly, and rested the spot. It took 30 minutes before the hen moved back into her holding position, and 15 minutes later, the male reappeared. This time there was something different: an orange yarn fly was firmly embedded in the corner of his mouth.

Hooking and losing a nice buck steelhead was exciting.

It took at least an hour for both fish to settle down, and I admired the day and the scenic beauty of this portion of the river. It seemed a great day to be alive. Upstream, I heard David talking to himself as a fish splashed. He was into a steelhead, and was telling the world about it.

My male with the lip decoration lay beside the female, and she let loose a jet of yellow eggs as both fish rolled on their sides, mouth agape, and he fertilized the eggs. I got a good look at the hen, and she was flat-bellied and had successfully spawned.

She headed into a log jam and disappeared from sight. She would now rest, and I had no problem casting again to the solitary male. This time he was more eager, and grabbed the orange fly on the second drift but he’d learned his previous lesson well. He darted into the brush, twisted around, and the hook pulled free.

Minutes later David came back downstream. He had landed a nice male and released it, and said he had covered over a mile of river and saw just those two fish.

Was it a perfect day? The weather was wonderful though a bit windy, and we each found a male fish to cast to. David hooked and landed his and released the big 12-pound buck, and I hooked and lost the same fish twice. Did we have a good time?

The answer was an emphatic “yes!” We fished several other areas that day, and never saw another steelhead. But, finding two males and hooking both of them, was just part of a perfect day. Fishing a spot I hadn’t fished in 30 years was a bonus, and it was nice to know that fish still hold in the same locations as they did more than 40 years ago.

David will soon be in Alaska running his fishing boat, and I’m here and lacking company. Perhaps I’ll return to that spot, but it’s more likely I’ll try another spot I haven’t fished in years. Going it alone doesn’t bother me, and sometimes I count myself lucky to still be able to fish for steelhead.

I’ll soon be 72 years old, but fly fishing is much like shooting pool. Once you learn how, it only takes a bit of practice to become proficient. I’ll never be as good at this type of fishing I was 40 years ago, but that’s just fine. One fish is enough to make me fall in love with steelhead all over again.

Searching for the Shack Diary

The Shack building and some of the members of the Traverse City Fly Club.

An important piece of local angling history has gone missing, and it disappeared several years ago. Where it is or who has the original book called “The Shack Diary” remains a complete mystery.

The Diary was more like a ledger than a real diary. Several Xerox copies exist, in whole or in part, but the original last owned by Jeanne Winnie Ball of Traverse City appears to have done a runner or someone put the five-finger discount on it.

This piece of legendary lore was kept by the late Art Winnie, a Traverse City barber and famous fly tier. Winnie’s daughter, Jeanne, found the Diary among some of his scrapbooks years ago.

It was a gentleman’s fishing-hunting club near Traverse City on the Boardman River.

The Shack, located on the Boardman River near Keystone and about five miles from Traverse City, seems to have sprung up from the logged-over land in the early spring of 1913. There were 10 founding members:

• Charles Alley
• John Corcoran
• David Core
• Carl Erickson
• Ed Gilbert
• Pat Hastings
• Charles Longnecker
• Charles Quick
• Bert Ward
• Art Winnie

The purpose of the Traverse City Fly Club, who owned the Shack, was to provide a place where the men could go to fish, and during the fall months, do some duck hunting, especially for mergansers that threatened to eat the river trout.

Bert Winnier (above) with a nice catch. Second fish from right was a grayling.

The Shack, as one observed noted, was “held together with chewing gum and cardboard.” Actually, based on photos I have, the Shack looked rather substantial although its location lacks any degree of beauty or aesthetics. Pine stumps, slashings and woody debris on land and in the water made foot travel a bit risky.

It seemed that fishing in those days was quite similar to what we experience today. Fishing can be wonderful today and rotten tomorrow, as the Diary so eloquently stated on many handwritten pages.

It seemed the Shack founders enjoyed their company, and a lengthy roster of guests were noted amid jotted observations that so-and-so left dirty dishes and others didn’t clean up after themselves. In that respect, some things never change … some people work and others do not.

Winnie cleans fish in the Boardman River in this photo of the Shack Diary. It has disappeared and an Important link to the past is gone.

It’s certain that most of the lengthy list of guests hailed from Traverse City but some came from many points around the country, including one visitor from Washington, DC. Guests include:

R. Anderson
Toots Armstrong
Mr. and Mrs. J. Bechtel
Harold Brown
Dr. A.W. Bruley
Walter Chase
David Core
Mark Craw; legendary conservation officer
John Farwell
Bill Foot
Walter Hanson
Remington Kellogg
Ray Lather
Dick Lawson
Charles Luick
D.J. McMeechan
Art Moore
J.B Moore
Theron Morgan
Donald Roxbury
Gus Ruff
Clayt Sardie
Jay Smith
Walt Thirlby
Harold Titus
George Winnie

If any names are misspelled, let’s blame it on faded handwriting and poor Xerox pages.

The record keeping was rather shoddy, and it seems that many dates were ignored or no one wanted to keep records that year. Some pages stated that fishing was bad while others boasted of large catches.

Members and guests of The Traverse City Fly Club also spent some of their time planting trout at various points near The Shack, and other nearby creeks as well as the Boardman River. Getting to The Shack was apparently an adventure in itself.

Getting to the Shack was an adventure. Most of the trees along the river had been cut during the timbering era.

The trail in was a corduroy trail of small tree trunks laid across the muck. One step off the trail, and it was a cold, stinky, wet walk into camp.

The Shack Diary continued, in fits and starts, until 1933 when the Traverse City Fly Club dismantled The Shack and relocated it to Rugg Pond in Kalkaska County. The photo on the cover of The Shack Diary was an original photo of Art Winnie as he cleaned some fish.

The story doesn’t end there. A number of people borrowed The Shack Diary from his grand-daughter Judy Weber [ (231) 275-5654 ], and all of them returned it except for one. My twin brother George had the Diary for a short time, and I saw, handled and read it, and then it was returned by him.

The late outdoor writer for The Record Eagle — Gordie Charles – graciously turned over his notes about this and hundreds of other local stories that he wrote for the newspaper and various magazines to me upon his death. By giving me these files, he asked me to appeal to my readers concerning the whereabouts of The Shack Diary.

If anyone knows anything about the whereabouts of the original Shack Diary, kindly contact me at:

Dave Richey
PO Box 192
Grawn, MI 49637
eMail me dave@daverichey.com

Or call Judy Weber at (231) 275-5654.

The Shack Diary needs to come home to rest.

Sportsmen name almost everything

Lea Lawrence (left)  & I chat about a grouse hunt at the Church covert.

What’s in a name? It depends on how anglers and hunters use the name to communicate with other sportsmen. Names can and do play an important role in how we feel and think about the outdoors.

They may remind us of a favorite trout pool with mist rising off it or a secret woodcock covert where white splashings cover fallen leaves, and names often play a major part in identifying where we fish or hunt.

Mind you, I’ve been banging around the outdoors for about 60 years. During those years I’ve learned some things about a good many places and things, and it’s fun to talk about these different spots to like-minded sportsmen with our special name codes. Of course, other folks may have developed their own names to confuse other anglers or hunters.

Naming locations is a great way to keep them a secret from strangers.

The Platte River has long been one of my favorite salmon and trout streams. I guided fishermen on it and several other streams in our northern counties for 10 years, and have fished it for 50 years.

The Platte has many local  names that help anglers pinpoint specific locations. For instance, the old Rope Hole, just upstream from the mouth, was the first spot salmon and steelhead would pause on their way upstream to spawn. It was known by this name by many anglers.

The Hole Where It Never Rains was a hotspot until the outlaws began going under the M-22 Bridge to snag fish. The conservation officers also knew where this spot was, but few people had the knack of fishing it.

The trick to fishing this hole was to wait until broad daylight. Any fish in the hole at dawn would stay there. Those people who went under the bridge in the dark would spook the fish upstream or down. The hole would be empty of fish at dawn if anglers tried fishing at night.

There was the Goose Pasture (also called the Goose Grounds), a campground on the upper Platte River off Goose Road. It was always good in the old days when more fish were available than anglers.

There was the Swimming Hole in Honor, the Doctor’s Hole and the Nurse’s Hole, all upstream from Honor. Two favorite spots years ago was the Grade. There were two: the Upper Grade between Haze Road and US-31 and the Lower Grade, downstream from Haze Road. These grades were where an old logging train once crossed the river. Some of the old pilings still remain but the only thing they are noted for now are gravel bars for spring and fall spawning fish.

We named everything. We had a river we named The Crick but no one knew it.

Think about it. Two anglers in a restaurant are talking about where to fish, and one would be heading for the Rope Hole while the other was heading for the Upper Grade. Few other anglers would know what we were talking about.

My Home Stream was the Sturgeon River in Cheboygan County between Wolverine and Indian River. I began fishing it at the age of 11, and spent every summer camping there to escape the downstate pollen that affected my hay fever. It too is rich in angling history and place names that were rather odd.

I can close my eyes, and think of The Snow Hole, and the spot instantly comes into focus in full color. The river flows downstream, dropping into a deep hole in front of the old Snow Cabin, and then it makes a sharp 90-degree bend to the left. It then splits into two current flows as it goes around a tiny island before both threads of current connect.

My late twin brother George and I laid claim to the Snow Hole while others who fished the Sturgeon had their favorite spots. The Sturgeon is a wild and free-flowing stream, and it holds steelhead and brown trout.

It also holds the ashes of my brother and of a very fine gentleman and good friend named Russ Bengel. He donated large sums of money to Ducks Unlimited, and loved the river like he loved life itself. One day when my last fishing trip has been taken, and my last hunt has ended, my ashes will mingle with theirs in my beloved Snow Hole.

Snow Hole, Five Sisters Hole — all were secrets to all my twin and a few others.

The Sturgeon is filled with names. Take the White Road Bridge. One might figure the bridge to be painted white, but it was painted red. Go figure. It was easy to throw people off our tracks if we mentioned going to fish the Five Sisters Hole. We seldom shared these secret names.

It wasn’t a hole, but a smooth run along the opposite bank, and at the head of the run were five aspen trees growing from a single trunk. The Rain Hole was immediately downstream, and it always paid off with a fish just before a rain.

You know how it is before a rain. You can smell it on the air. We would race off to the Rain Hole, and if we beat the rain, it always delivered a nice steelhead. It was one of the surest bets on the Sturgeon River.

Then there were the Meadows  pools, the Clay Hole, Yontz’s Hole, Eddie’s Pool, Railroad Bridge and many others. Knowing the whereabouts of these named locations gave some anglers a heads-up on others who were out of the loop.

Names also applied to hunting, and nowhere was it more pronounced than with grouse or woodcock coverts. Upland bird hunters were more close-mouthed than mushroom pickers and trout fishermen, and the names they gave to each of their favorite coverts were known only to them and two or three close friends who had been sworn to secrecy.

A good friend always starts hunting at the Church covert. This bit of tag alder swale was noted for October woodcock, and among those of us who knew its location, we kept it a secret for years. Actually, the secret didn’t come out until the aspen and tag alders grew too high, and it became useless habitat for migrating birds.

The Caboose covert was on private land, and was surrounded by 40 acres of aspen and bracken fern bordered by an old pasture on one side, a road on the other, and the edge of a damp cedar swamp. It produced wonderful grouse and woodcock hunting for many years, and its name was derived from a train caboose sitting in the woods. Don’t ask me why, but it was there for many years. A few of us were allowed to hunt the area for birds, and we flushed more than one grouse from under the caboose.

Then there were key grouse hotspots such as the Grape Arbor Run, the Split Rail Fence, and Old Baldy. The area 20 feet below Old Baldy was grown up to a smorgasbord of grouse foods, and it held plenty of grouse until wild turkeys moved in and took over. They used Old Baldy’s sand to dust in, and the grouse moved out.

Another spot that always comes to mind even though shooting grouse has become more difficult in recent years. I called it Dave’s Double, in reference to one of those memorable days when the shooting gods smile and two grouse flush. I took the farthest one first, and then swung on the closer bird, and he fell in a puff of feathers. It was my first double on ruffed grouse, and the spot deserved a name.

In fact, such locations are named for a variety of reasons. Some make sense while others do not, but there it is. We accept such things, and when the whim strikes, we name another location.

Many such spots are meaningless except to us, and then only because something caused them to stand out in our mind. Naming our hotspots is as much a part of fishing and hunting as carrying a rod and reel or toting a shotgun into the woods.

And less you think all such places are good, I’ll close with one where I won’t be when the deer season open Oct. 1. I won’t be in the Willow Tree stand. I tried it once, the wind kicked up, and the willow blew six feet in one direction in a gust, and six feet back. A nice 8-pointer showed up, and I came to full draw and couldn’t keep the sight on the deer.

I gave up and climbed down. Later that night, part of the willow tree broke off and fell to the ground. It smashed up my stand but I was long gone by then, and much wiser for the experience.