George and I fished and hunted together for many years

It was one of those days when it felt good to be cleaning my steelhead rods and reels. It gave me something to do while procrastinating over figuring our income tax.

I was puttering with a light spinning reel with 4-pound line when a memory jolted me. It was about brother George, and he was coming down the Little Manistee River in early April with a rampaging steelhead on his line. It was the first of many fish we'd catch that day.

"Try and get a net under this guy," he hollered. "I hooked him a quarter-mile upstream, but he's riding the current broadside. Stick your net in the water, and I'll put him head-first into the net. Ready?"

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

George poses with a near-30-pound river king salmon.

"Good dip," he said, as we waded ashore. The steelhead, a red-sashed male with bright cheeks and gill covers, was 16 pounds of broad-beamed raw power. George worked the No. 4 wiggler fly free, eased the big guy into the river, and with a splash it was gone.

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 to remember: never shoot the first caribou bull you see, and don't shoot a cow caribou. They have very small antlers.

We hunted together, and I ran him down the 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 plans were to scout the south part of the lake. I found an area where countless caribou had walked through, and the trail looked like a cattle trail. I was looking for a good downwind spot to sit when a shot was heard.

It could only be George. The others in our party were far to the north of us. 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."

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.

Another time we hunted Le Chateau Montebello, a famous resort in Quebec. We were there to hunt deer, and the guide told us we would 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 been involved in deer drives for most of my life. 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, and it was a beautiful sight to behold.

He turned to look the opposite way, and I slowly raised the rifle and shot. He went down, and he almost beat me to that 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 to move it."

The guide showed up, we boiled a kettle to have hot tea with our sandwiches, and took a four-mile hike to his truck and a short drive to the deer. 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 with each us, 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 or might not be an adventure. We didn't know if we'd find any pink salmon.

We would fish pink salmon in the morning and hunt 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 steelhead and salmon patterns. The fish weren't big but were very aggressive.

"Here's another one," he said. "I'm taking it in to the store to get it weighed. I figure it to be just over two pounds. There's no state record for these fish so let's set one this trip."

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 many 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 greet each new day with a smile on his face. He had the capacity to make people feel good.

Geprge was always 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 bear.

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

The animal walked in, stopped near the edge of the swamp, stood up to survey the bait site, and slowly dropped down to all four feet. The bear was cagey and moved slowly to circle the bait. There was no wind, and scenting conditions were bad, and it played the role of being sneaky.

George could see the animal at times, watched the bracken ferns move as the bruin walked through them, but could never see enough to take 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 the bruin 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 prize for my twin brother.

George and I shared 64 years of fishing and hunting in many different locations across Canada and the United States, and I saw that he could accompany me on some great and wonderful fishing and hunting trips. It's early spring now, with more time to think, and to reminisce about those great memories of the Richey twins on the trail together is something that will always stick with me. In memory of George Richey, 1939-2003.

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors