Dreams of big Quebec char

Doug Knight (left) and the author with a lightly colored & silvery char

The dream began sometime late last night. Many of my better dreams are remembered, and some are savored and occasionally one will haunt me for a day or two. This one was weird but true, as are most tales of fishing or hunting dreams from the far north.

My dreams often deal with fishing or hunting, and the odd thing is that many are dreams about things I’ve experienced sometime in the past. Last night’s dream was from 30 years ago and it’s as vivid as it had just happened. It was my first trip where Arctic char were available, and it was a wonderful week spent catching the occasional Atlantic salmon, brook trout and char.

There was Ed Murphy from Sports Afield magazine, a man I’d sold many magazine articles to. He and the late Doug Knight, a freelance writer, and I were fishing at Bobby Snowball’s camp at the mouth of Quebec’s Tunulik River. Mind you, the Tunulik literally throws itself over a waterfall about 300 yards up-river from salt water, and the stream gradient from the falls to the salt is steep with haystacks of standing white water.

Getting to this area of Quebec’s Ungava Bay is a long plane ride.

I was accustomed to sight-fishing for visible fish, and Arctic char were our quarry. A few Atlantic salmon were mixed in with the char, and it took a heavy Dardevle to get down to the char holding at the edge of the fast water.

Bobby Snowball, an Inuit from Quebec’s Ungava Bay region spoke fluent English as he met the plane. I’d made all the arrangements for the three of us on this trip, and he escorted me up the dock to the cabins where we would sleep. Children were throwing balls, and one of the balls bounced off a dead Inuit woman laying on the ground beside my tent.

“Uh, Bobby,” I asked, trying not to be offensive but needing to know, “what’s up with the dead woman?”

“Oh, that’s my mother,” he said. “She died three days ago and we’re waiting for an airplane to come in and take her back to town. Hopefully, she will go out tomorrow.”

The dead lady was a bit troubling but the feeling soon passed.

The fishing was nothing short of sensational. Large orange- or silvery-flanked fish held below the falls in the rushing white water, and by casting into the falling water and feeding six feet of slack line into the cast, the Dardevle <www.eppingerdardevlelures.com> was soon wobbling past their noses. Every tenth cast or so, a char would peel out of the group and savagely maul the lure.

These fish are uncommonly strong, and when swimming downstream, it took them 20 seconds to peel off line and make it to salt water. On the hook-up, I jumped from rock to rock (some as big as a single-story house), and to say I was leaping like a gazelle would be wrong. I felt more like a young hippo, and it had to have been a roller coaster ride for the fish.

Of all the char we caught only one jumped and it was at best a feeble attempt. However, the fight on 10-pound line was as tough a struggle as any angler could hope to experience. If a 12-pound char and a 15-pound Chinook salmon were tied tail to tail, the char would drag the salmon to its death. There is no quit in their fight, and once we reached salt water, the fish were still full of energy and every fight turned my wrist into a weary joint that became more weakened by the day.

The Inuit were a quiet but fun-loving group, and when we stopped for shore lunch, I soon learned to cook my own lunch of Arctic char. Bobby and his friends and neighbors would fare well at today’s sushi bars. Their fish, wrapped in tin foil and tossed into the fire, weren’t even warm in the middle when they began eating. We decided to cook our own fish, and the red flesh was delightful when cooked until done but not overcooked.

Fresh fish cooked on the rocky shoreline were tasty.

One fish would feed Knight, Murphy and me, and once we began cooking our own, we were soon hooked on the delicate flavor.

One sea-run brook trout was caught and I tangled with and landed two Atlantic salmon on spoons but they were returned. The Inuit told me they were legal to keep, but legal only for the Native People and not for visitors. For us, if one could be caught on a fly, it would have been a legal catch.

This particular trip was recalled in its entirety last night, and relayed here. The fishing was next-door to the best I’ve ever seen, and there is something haunting about watching herds of caribou migrate by within 50 yards while we battled fish with flanks the color of orange-pineapple ice cream.

And, best of all, the elderly dead lady vanished from outside my tent wall late the second day and I mentally wished her a safe journey, and I slept like a baby that night while dreaming of crimson-sided wilderness fish.

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.

The Richey Twins on the outdoor trail

George with a 30-pound-plus king salmon.

It was a nice day and it felt good to be cleaning steelhead rods and reels. This job seemed better than working on the computer.

I was puttering with a reel with 4-pound line when a memory jolted me like an electric shock. It was about my late brother George, and he was coming down the Little Manistee River years ago fighting a rampaging steelhead.

“Try and get a net under this guy,” he hollered. “I hooked him a quarter-mile up-river, but he’s riding the current broadside. Stick your net in the water, and I’ll put him head-first into it.”

This was the moment of truth with this big steelhead.

My net was pulled from under my belt behind my back. The fish was 10 feet upstream as my net went into the river, and George leaned back to get the fish up on the surface, and at just the right time, he dropped the tip and the fish dove into the net. My sole job was to lift it out of the water.

“Good dip,” he said, as we waded ashore. The steelhead, a red-slashed male with bright cheeks and gill covers, was 16 pounds of broad-beamed raw power. George worked the No. 4 wiggler fly out, eased the big guy into the river, and with a splash he was gone. Our trips came and went like that fish.

Several years before George died in 2003, I took him caribou hunting in northern Quebec. From home to Montreal, I told him there were two things you don’t do: never shoot the first caribou bull seen, and never shoot a cow caribou. They do have very small antlers.

We hunted together, and I ran him down the sprawling lake in a square-stern canoe with a small outboard motor, pointed to the top of a tall and open “baldie,” a treeless hill-top where long-range visibility was superb.

He would use binoculars, and study any caribou seen. My plan was to scout the lake’s south end. I found an area where caribou had traveled, and the trail looked like a cattle path. I was looking for a good downwind spot to sit when a shot rang out.

It could only be George. The others in our party were far to the north. I returned to the canoe, motored over to where I’d dropped him off, and saw him trudging down the hill, carrying something. The closer he got, the more it looked like a cow caribou head.

“Didn’t I say not to shoot a cow?” I asked. He bowed his head in mock shame, and said: “But I’ll have the biggest cow caribou rack in camp.”

George admitted shooting a cow caribou and took the razzing.

The other hunters teased him about it, and he made up for it by shooting a very nice bull two days later. The razzing didn’t bother him, and he had fun.

Another time we hunted Le Chateau Montebello, a famous Quebec resort. We were there to hunt whitetails, and our guide said we’d be lucky to see a deer. If we did, he said, it would be a shooter.

The guy put on one-man drives, and I’ve worked deer drives for many years. I can tell good drives from bad, and this guy was an expert. He walked softly, yipped like a beagle puppy occasionally, and never hurried the deer. They just moved slowly ahead of him.

Far off, on the third day, I heard him yip softly to let us know he was coming. It was a large area to watch, but 10 minutes later a white-antlered 8-pointer eased from the woods and stood, side-lit by the sun against a pine tree. It was a beautiful sight.

The buck came out, turned away from me, and I took the close shot.

He turned to look the opposite way, and I slowly raised the rifle and shot. He went down, and George almost beat me to the buck. It was the only deer we saw, but he wasn’t disappointed. He loved listening to the wolves howl at night, and was happy that one of us took a good buck.

“Good shot, good buck, and where’s the guide?” He asked. “This buck weighs well over 200 pounds, and we will need help moving it.”

The guide showed up, we boiled a kettle for tea with our sandwiches, and walked four miles to his truck. It is the only whitetail I’ve taken in Quebec, but it’s important because we shared the hunt in a unique Canadian location.

Neither of us have ever been competitive, but years ago before I wrote the first story about pink salmon runs in Upper Peninsula streams, George was with me to share what might be an adventure. We didn’t know if we’d find the humpback salmon or not.

We fished pink salmon in the morning and hunted bears in the afternoon, and soon found fish in the Big Huron River. They usually spawn on odd-numbered years and we found hordes of them on the first gravel bar above the river-mouth.

We’d guided river fishermen for 10 years, and began catching pinkies on flies. An orange fly tied on a No 6 hook produced best, and they were some of George’s tried-and-true original steelhead and salmon patterns. The fish weren’t big but were aggressive.

Dueling it out for a Michigan state pink-salmon record.

Here’s another one,” he said. “I’m taking it to the store to weigh it. I figure he’ll be just over two pounds. There’s no state record for pink salmon so let’s set one.”

Back he came, and it weighed 2 lbs., 3 oz., and so I tried to beat him. Mine weighed 2 lbs., 4 oz. The next day we caught fish of 2 lbs., 5 oz, and then 2 lbs., six oz. On the last day George caught one that weighed 2 lbs., 7 oz. and it became a state record that stood for several years.

I was tickled for him, and he got a Master Angler award, and the mounted fish hung in the DNR offices in Lansing for years before his record was broken. He didn’t care. He’d had his “15 minutes of fame.”

And that was the neat thing about brother George. He could go with the flow, be happy doing anything outdoors, and greeted each day with a smile on his face. He had the capacity to make others feel good and feel as if they were the most important person in his life on that day.

He was game for almost anything. I set up a bear hunt in the Upper Peninsula one year, and although he had hunted bruins near St. Helens, he wanted an Upper Peninsula bruin.

We hunted near Marquette and near the Laughing Whitefish River, and it was there on a nice September day that he took a good animal.

It walked in, stopped near the edge of the swamp, stood up to survey the bait site, and slowly dropped to all fours. The bear was cagey and moved slowly to circle the bait. There was no wind, and scenting conditions were bad, but the bruin was cautious.

After catching pink salmon, George shot a nice black bear.

George could see the animal at times, watched the bracken ferns move as it walked through them, but could never see enough for an accurate shot. Finally, apparently satisfied that all was well, the bear strolled slowly into the bait site and stood facing him.

He waited until it turned and offered a broadside shot, and one shot from his 30-06 took out the heart and lungs, and broke the off-side shoulder. His bear weighed a bit over 200 pounds, and it was a wonderful animal for him.

George and I shared 64 years of great fishing and hunting adventures, and I made sure he could accompany me on some of these fishing and hunting trips. Summer is a great time to remember, and these fond memories of the Richey twins on the outdoor trail will always stick with me.

Perhaps one day soon, I’ll tell of many other fishing and hunting trips where he and I had wonderful times outdoors, together and sharing our common love for the outdoors. He was a great companion, and I certainly miss him.

Dreaming of Quebec’s Arctic char

Doug Knight left and guide on Tunulik River & Knight with nice fish.

The dream began sometime late last night. Many of my better dreams are remembered, and some are savored and occasionally one will haunt me for a day or two. This one was weird but true, as are most tales of fishing or hunting dreams from the far north.

My dreams often deal with fishing or hunting, and the odd thing is that many are dreams about things I’ve experienced sometime in the past. Last night’s dream was from 30 years ago and it’s as vivid as the photo above. It was my first trip where Arctic char were available, and it was a wonderful week spent catching the occasional Atlantic salmon, brook trout and char.

There was Ed Murphy from Sports Afield magazine, a man I’d sold many magazine articles to. He and the late Doug Knight, a freelance writer, and I were fishing at Bobby Snowball’s camp at the mouth of Quebec’s Tunulik River. Mind you, the Tunulik literally throws itself over a waterfall about 300 yards up-river from salt water, and the stream gradient from the falls to the salt is steep with haystacks of standing white water.

Getting to this area of Quebec’s Ungava Bay is a long plane ride.

I was accustomed to sight-fishing for visible fish, and Arctic char were our quarry. A few Atlantic salmon were mixed in with the char, and it took a heavy Dardevle to get down to the char holding at the edge of the fast water.

Bobby Snowball, an Inuit from Quebec’s Ungava Bay region spoke fluent English as he met the plane. I’d made all the arrangements for the three of us on this trip, and he escorted me up the dock to the cabins where we would sleep. Children were throwing balls, and one of the balls bounced off a dead Inuit woman laying on the ground beside my tent.

“Uh, Bobby,” I asked, trying not to be offensive but needing to know, “what’s up with the dead woman?”

“Oh, that’s my mother,” he said. “She died three days ago and we’re waiting for an airplane to come in and take her back to town. Hopefully, she will go out tomorrow.”

The dead lady was a bit troubling but it soon passed.

The fishing was nothing short of sensational. Large orange-colored fish held below the falls in the rushing white water, and by casting into the falling water and feeding six feet of slack line into the cast, the Dardevle was soon wobbling past their noses. Every tenth cast or so, a char would peel out of the group and savagely maul the lure.

These fish are uncommonly strong, and when swimming downstream, it took them 20 seconds to peel off line and make it to salt water. On the hook-up, I jumped from rock to rock (some as big as a single-story house), and to say I was leaping like a gazelle would be wrong. I felt more like a young hippo, and it had to have been a roller coaster ride for the fish.

Of all the char we caught only one jumped and it was at best a feeble attempt. However, the fight on 10-pound line was as tough a struggle as any angler could hope to experience. If a 12-pound char and a 15-pound Chinook salmon were tied tail to tail, the char would drag the salmon to its death. There is no give-up in their fight, and once we reached salt water, the fish were still full of energy and every fight turned my wrist into a weary joint that became more weakened by the day.

The Inuit were a quiet but fun-loving group, and when we stopped for shore lunch, I soon learned to cook my own lunch of Arctic char. Bobby and his friends and neighbors would fare well at today’s sushi bars. Their fish, wrapped in tin foil and tossed into the fire, weren’t even warm in the middle when they began eating. We decided to cook our own fish, and the red flesh was delightful when cooked until done but not overcooked.

Fresh fish cooked on the rocky shoreline were tasty.

One fish would feed Knight, Murphy and me, and once we began cooking our own, we were soon hooked on the delicate taste.

One sea-run brook trout was caught and I tangled with and landed two Atlantic salmon on spoons but they were returned. The Inuit told me they were legal to keep, but legal only for the Native People and not for visitors. For us, if one could be caught on a fly, it would have been a legal catch.

This particular trip was recalled in its entirety last night, and relayed here. The fishing was next-door to the best I’ve ever seen, and there is something haunting about watching herds of caribou migrate by within 50 yards while we battled fish with flanks the color of orange-pineapple ice cream.

And, best of all, the elderly dead lady vanished from outside my tent wall late the second day and I mentally wished her a safe journey, and I slept like a baby that night while dreaming of crimson-sided wilderness fish.

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