The fish that becomes an addiction

Dave Richey plays a big Lake St. Clair muskie.

Muskies have been a preferred species of mine for many years, in many states and the Provinces of Ontario and Quebec, and it’s my sincere belief they are the most unpredictable, ornery and cantankerous and unpredictable fresh water game fish in North America.

They may hit well one day, but may go several days before they decide to hit again. Sometimes they will follow a lure to the boat, look it over and sink out of sight with total disdain.

The result can be something like a baseball game. No hits, no runs, no errors, and no fish either.

There is very little about muskie fishing that is easy. Most of it is hard work.

Muskies are finicky, and each day the angler fishes, he just knows this will be the one he has waited for all his life. Once the day ends without a muskie or a strike, most anglers become mildly dejected.

That soon passes as fishermen assume the philosophy: Well, maybe they will hit tomorrow. Sometimes they do but more often than not, they won’t.

Muskie Fever affects different people in oddly different ways. It’s difficult for non-fishermen to understand, and year after year, muskie fans return to their favorite waters with high expectations. All they want is one legal muskie, but unless one fishes Lake St. Clair, that can be as lofty a goal as hitting the Lotto jackpot.

Lake St. Clair is the lake of choice for many catch-and-release muskie anglers. Many of the fish are caught trolling, and that’s fine. However, some anglers will stand and cast crankbaits, jerkbaits and spinnerbaits until their arm wears out.

For this latter group, catching a legal muskellunge is one of fishing’s most difficult pursuits. It’s even more difficult to catch a legal fish, but Lake St. Clair is producing some 50-inch fish but anyone who has fished for muskies before knows that a fish that size doesn’t come along very often.

Stand-up casting has been my forte for many years, and I enjoy pitching a big plug or spinnerbait out, time after time, and noting a following fish can be as meaningful as catching one.

Trolling with in-line planer boards is the best bet for Lake St. Clair muskies; here’s Al Stewart with a 30-pounder

Trolling is a terrific way to catch Lake St. Clair muskies, and I’ve had days with Captain Steve VanAssche of Harrison Township where our crew has landed over 20 muskellunge in one day. Some are smaller than legal size, some are just legal, and on occasion a fish weighing 30 or more pounds is caught.

The trick with trolling is using planer boards, and three lines are legal in Michigan waters while only one line per angler can be used in Ontario. Put six people aboard a boat, and you have six or 12 lines out, depending on where you fish, and it increases the odds of hooking fish.

The stand-up-and-cast angler is a glutton for punishment. He or she will stand, hour after hour, and make one cast after another. If a following fish is seen but doesn’t hit, they try a different lure or different color. No hits, they return every two hours in hopes of raising the fish again.

They do a Figure 8 or Letter J rod-tip movement with the lure at the side of the boat at the end of every cast, and once in a great while this method will produce a strike. It’s been my experience that most muskies that hit are never seen until they arrow up from bottom and slam the bucktail or other lure.

Michigan has many good muskie waters but Lake St. Clair is the nation’s best.

There are numerous good muskie lakes in this state for the angler that prefers to cast for them. Budd Lake at Harrison is a good bet, as is Skegemog Lake near Traverse City. Other lakes near Skegemog that produce the occasional muskie include Elk, Intermediate and Torch.

Lac Vieux Desert on the Michigan-Wisconsin border is a great lake and noted for its big fish. Iron Lake in Iron County produces some big fish, and Munuscong Bay in Chippewa County is another steady producer.

Indian between Burt and Mullett lakes produces some fish. Long Lake at Traverse City produces very few muskies but those that are landed often weigh 30 pounds or more.

Muskie fishing can be an addiction. What anglers become addicted to is not the fish as much as that heart-stopping strike, the feeling of power as a big fish strips heavy line off the reel, and the effort required to pump that hooked fish off bottom.

Sometimes that muskie will come to the boat, open his mouth, and the big lure will fall out. The fish slowly sinks from sight, and that hooks the angler again. We fish muskies, not just for the fish, but for the adrenalin rush that comes when we have a solid hook-up.

The only cure for this disease is to go fishing again. Muskie, slimy and ugly, grab hold of our emotions and only death or infirmity rids us of this malady.

Light line, small spinners & big spring crappies

The late John Cartier with a big crappie from Michigan’s Hamlin Lake.

Very few things about fishing are really new. Granted, new reels, lines and lures may be new and different, but when it comes to catching fish, new techniques are slow to be developed. Most of what we really know is isn’t really new, but  occasionally an angler may find it new to them,

I’m so mindful of a day I spent several years ago with the late John Cartier of Ludington, Mich. He was the long-time regional field editor for Outdoor Life magazine, and he was writing a book on cooking fish. My wife Kay was doing the lay-out for his self-published book, and we were visiting. A mix of business and pleasure.

“Feel like catching a bunch of crappies?” he asked. “It’s mid-May, and I’ve got a sure-fire method for locating these tasty game fish, and once we’ve found them we can anchor and cast to the fish. Pere Marquette Lake has an excellent population of them.

The hope of learning a new fishing method was good news to me.

I’m almost always game for catching fish, and was more than a little curious about his method. It turned out that his method was a take-off on an old method of slow trolling a No. 0 Mepps Aglia spinner with a silver or gold blade. He tied a short leader to the hooks, tied in a No. 12 treble hook, draped part of a nightcrawler on the treble hook, and began trolling it slowly over eight feet of water.

“The trick,” he said, as we began letting out our lines on both sides of the boat, “is to troll this rig about 40-feet behind a slow-moving boat. Set your drag fairly light because crappies have a paper-thin mouth. A tight drag will tear the hooks out and you’ll lose the fish.”

We’d covered perhaps 30 feet, when my ultra-light rod with 6-pound line jerked back toward the stern of the boat, and no hook-set was needed. I saluted the fish softly, and the black-and-white speckled crappie rose to the surface behind the boat. In he came, and the first of many crappies went into our live basket.

“Seen this method before?” Cartier asked. “I’ve been using it for many years, and it’s a quick and easy way to find crappie concentrations in the spring. We’ll keep trolling, and see if we can find a bunch of them. There are several fish shelters of old Christmas trees up ahead that a neighbor placed on the ice several years ago, and they are weighted down with cement blocks. The fish like to suspend around those brushpiles.”

We headed that way, and less than a minute later, just as Cartier told me we were going past the brush, we had a strike at the same time. Both of us were soon lost in the delight of hooking slab crappies on light line. He netted mine and then his, and held up both fish for inspection.

These crappies were big fish and hard fighters.

They were about 14 inches long with a big mouth, and when laid in Cartier’s palm, they covered his hand and wrist. They followed their cousin into the wire mesh live well.

I told Cartier the only difference between my method and his was I used a small willow-leaf spinner with a single long-shank No. 10 gold hook. The method meant keeping the lure down about four feet, zigzagging a little one way or the other, and never getting into too deep water this early in the season. The fish like the lures presented slow, a good distance behind the boat, and the spinner blade barely turning over. Using a small electric trolling motor allows a slow and quiet approach when these fish are in the shallows.

“What I like about this particular method is that it’s quite easy to survey a small lake or to section off various areas on a larger body of water, and it seldom takes long to find the fish. I usually start fishing in shallow back bays with a black marl bottom and some vegetation, brush or weeds. The water warms faster here, and that gets spring fish going.

This little bay was near his lakeside home. and it wasn’t hardly big enough to be called a bay but it produced some nice fish. We head on down the lake, and finally found a spot where we caught several fish. We anchored, and began casting the same rig.

The crappies were there, and apparently hungry. We caught one fish after another, and soon had caught a limit  each of these tasty fish.

We each caught a limit of fine-eating game fish.

“It’s time to quit,” he said. “We can head in, clean the fish and there’s nothing better than a passel of spring crappies deep fried to a golden brown. Cartier’s fish cook book has numerous recipes that can be used for cooking crappies, and he had a captive audience of hungry people.

He deep-fried some of the fish, and grilled some with another of his recipes, and along with some fried potatoes and baked beans, it was a fitting end to a fine day with an old friend. His fish recipes are interchangeable, and just a recipie and try it. Cartier been gone for a few years now, but this hard-boiled outdoor writer was a good and kind friend, an excellent writer and very knowledgeable about fishing and hunting. And I miss him.

Note: I have a few copies of his book, Best Fish Ever.

• Only a few copies remain
• If interested send a check for $15.95; postpaid to

David Richey
c/o Scoop’s Books
PO Box 192
Grawn, MI 49637

• Email me first daverichey1@gmail.com, to determine availability.

The Human Element is still essential to success

In the old days (before graphs and other sonar rigs) we used two- to six-ounce sinkers, heavy mono and tied the line to a capped Clorox bottle. A bottle would be at one end of our trolling run, and the other would be at the opposite end.That left a lot of bottom structure that might have several humps and bumps in it, along with a few indentations, a weed bed or two, some submerged points and the result was we had many chances of getting hung up on bottom.

Then came dumb-bell shaped markers with a heavy weight. Toss it out at one end of the trolling pass and another at the opposite end, and the results were much the same as with the one-gallon jugs. We learned, and used markers every 50 yards, and it was an improvement because they were brightly colored and more easily seen.

A transition from the old ways to the new.

Next came sonar units, liquid crystal and paper graphs, and fishing became a little bit easier. Electric bow-mounted trolling motors allowed us to stay pinned to the hotspot, and we could work it until the fish hit, stopped biting or took off.

All the modern electronics  in the world do not make fish bite. We can have a paper graph (not many in use these days but I loved mine), and a depth sounder. We can have electric downriggers to put our lures at the depth our graph tells us the fish are holding, and we can check the surface and deep-water temperatures, and even a marine radio to check with our buddies to determine how deep, which lure and what color to use.

Has these improvement helped? Of course, but they aren’t a cure-all of fishing ills. They don’t automatically hit a nd stay hooked.

But for the most part, all the fancy stuff still doesn’t do diddly. We must still determine what the fish are hitting, and how best to present the bait or lure to that depth to elicit a possible strike. We can take it to the fish, but there must be something present to make the fish slam into the bait or lure.

The bottom line is that the best electronics can help anglers but the proper use of bait or lures is what causes fish to strike. Planer boards are used for muskies, salmon, trout and walleyes, to name a few, and anyone who has been on a walleye charter knows that there are times when all lures of the same model, and often of the same color combination, but two or three out of a spread will consistently produce a decent catch of fish.

Electronics can help us catch fish.

All we do with the others is wash the dust off them by trolling them through the water. Hold identical lures with the same paint color over the side, and both lures will produce an identical action.

So why, pray tell, will one catch fish and the other one never gets a bump? Why can we switch rods and positions, and the same lure continues to produce while the other does not?

I  get curious about some of the oddest things. Look back, those of you in your sixties, and remember how we used an anchor or hand-held marked rope with a five-pound lead weight to determine the bottom contour. We would triangulate these positions with three shoreline locations, and when done fishing that spot, we’d go back to retrieve our markers.

Now, we can punch in the way points on a GPS, and be on target every minute of the day. Has electronics taken all the fun out of fishing?

The human element still remains part of the success equation.

No, I don’t think so. Regardless of how many electronic goodies we trick out our boat with, and how often we use them, they are still incapable of making fish bite.

Granted, we can locate a school of perch with some type of sonar unit, ease a bow and stern anchor to bottom. We bait up with long-shank hooks directly over the fish and use wigglers, minnows or soft-shell crabs. We ease our baits to bottom, keep the line tight, and if the perch are in a mood to bite, they will. If they choose not to hit, nothing we can  do will make them pull our string.

We can use a sonar unit on the Detroit River to find rocky humps and the big walleyes that hover nearby in mid-April. We can vertical jig minnow-tipped jigs and stay directly over those fish, and pound the baited jig into bottom, but it still doesn’t always make them strike.

It’s said that presentation is everything in fishing. That is close to being true, but without the human element: the lift-drop of the jig; the proper retrieve; the certain something that muskie fishermen put on the jerkbait to make it dance — all of these things are much more important than the electronics we use.

The first magazine article I sold was to Sports Afield in 1967. It paid the princely sum of $400, and I used that money to buy one of Lowrance Electronic’s “little green boxes.”

Did I catch more fish? Sure did, but I was fishing more and learning how to tell the difference between fish near bottom and bottom. It was fun, but in the long run,  had I fished salmon at the proper depth (near the surface that first year in 1967) I still would have caught fish. No electronics were needed.

The human touch and the ability to think things out is what helps us catch fish. Our electronics aid in certain ways, but in most types of fishing, the human element is more important when it comes time to catch fish.

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