A lifetime of steelhead fishing

A buck steelhead hovering over a spring spawning bed
photo c. Dave Richey Outdoors ©2012

A friend stopped by the other day with a buddy of his. The other gent wanted to meet me, and have a discussion about steelhead fishing.

It began mildly enough when we shook hands, and we made small talk for a few minutes. Then, in a burst of what seemed like pent-up anger, he questioned me about my steelhead fishing.

"You've written that you have caught 100 steelhead in one day, and another time you wrote that you'd probably landed nearly 10,000 steelhead in your life," he said. "I think both statements are a crock. No one can catch that many steelhead these days."

Mind you, this dude was a guest in my home. I didn't take kindly to his ranting insults, and that I might be lying.

I agree that he was probably right. It would be most difficult, if not impossible, these days to catch 1,000 steelhead in a lifetime. I also added that he must have missed something from both stories he had read. I learned long ago that people read what they want to read into a story, and then want to argue their mistakes when they are wrong.

"First of all, Bud, I wrote that two of us caught 100 steelhead in one day, and will gladly introduce you to the other man who has a much shorter fuse than mine," I said in an even voice. "Call him or me a liar, and you'll find a rocky time ahead."

"But ... but," he stammered. And I then told him it's not polite to interrupt someone when they are speaking. He quickly shut up.

I explained that the 100-fish day happened over 25 years ago, on a cold and snowy day with lots of wind, and most steelhead fishermen were home or working. We happened to find a big school of fish, and it seemed as none had eaten in a month. Every orange-colored fly we pitched to them resulted in a strike.

We quit fishing once with nearly 60 fish that we had caught and released unharmed. We went for breakfast, checked another stream, and headed back to the hotspot for a second round. We were up to about 85 fish when my buddy fell, got soaking wet and headed for the car and some welcome heat.

I envied him but there were more fish to hook

I stuck with it, caught what it took to hit 100 fish, and kept only one small male steelie that inhaled a fly through his mouth and was hooked in the gills from the inside. The fish was bleeding heavily and would die so I kept it.

And then, catching approximately 10,000 steelhead. I'm 73 now, and began steelhead fishing at age 11. By the time I was 15, I was catching between 100 and 200 steelies each year, and that was from the Sturgeon River between Indian River and Wolverine. Mind you, that was back in the early to mid-1950s.

By the time I was 18 in 1957, I was fishing even more often, and the fish numbers shot up to about 300 steelhead per year. Some of those fish were caught during a "temperature run" caused by Burt Lake fish seeking comfort in the cooler river water. Competition? There wasn't any.

By my mid-20s, I was fishing steelhead along the Lake Michigan shoreline. Favorite streams were the Betsie, Little Manistee and Platte rivers, and those rivers held lots of fish and very few anglers.

It was really amazing, and seldom would I keep a fish. I would have six or eight 30-fish days each year, and always put the fish back. A quick, hard fight, and a swift release and no harm to the fish.

I began guiding salmon and steelhead fishermen in 1967 when the spawning runs first began, and my clients cared nothing about steelhead. Everyone wanted salmon, so I'd give them lessons and once they learned how to cast, I'd "go check for other hot-spots." I always carried my Black Beauty fly rod, and I always looked for steelhead holding downstream of spawning salmon where they gobbled free-drifting salmon eggs.

Those fish were always caught and released, and I'd return often to check on my people and lead them to new batches of salmon. I guided for 10 years, spring and fall, and not once did my clients go home without a limit of fish. Not only was I the first fly-fishing wading guide in the state for anadromous browns, salmon and steelhead, but I pioneered this fishing and developed many of the tactics in common use today.

Whenever I had a free day, I would check rivers to keep track of the runs, and the best way to do that was to fish. There were countless days, especially in November and December when the rivers were full of steelhead and everyone else was deer hunting, working or at home, close to some heat. Those months can be brutal on a steelhead stream.

I could easily say I personally landed 400 to 500 steelhead each year during my guiding years, which would mean 4,000 to 5,000 fish during those 10 years. One also must remember the limit back then was five fish daily, and seldom a day passed without catching a limit. Again, perhaps 99 percent of those fish were released.

Steelhead laying on a spawning bed
photo c. Dave Richey Outdoors ©2012

Fish only for male fish

One also must remember that the big push by the Michigan Steelheader’s group really didn't get underway until the mid-1970s. Back then, people who had caught three or four steelhead in a lifetime were introducing their friends to the sport.

High steelhead numbers held through the early 1980s, and although I no longer was guiding, I was still fishing hard in the spring and fall. It was great: I'd fish for steelhead in the morning, and bow hunt for whitetails in the afternoon and early evening. It was great fun.

Do I know precisely how many steelhead I've landed? It was well over 8,000 steelhead by 1976 when I quit guiding. I know I've caught well over 2,000 fish since then, and if it hasn't reached 10,000 by now, I'd be very surprised.

I'd consider myself a fish hog and poacher if I'd kept everything I caught, but nearly all fish were released after a fast, spirited fight. Most spring steelhead are soft-fleshed and not tasty, and they don't freeze well. I only fished for male steelies in the spring, and never bothered fishing for the females. I avoided hooking the hens.

Nowadays, with my vision problems, I don't fish steelies as hard or nearly as often as I once did, and that is a good thing. Bowlers become expert by rolling 20 games or more each week, and steelhead fishermen become better anglers by fishing daily.

I courteously ushered the head-shaking gent to the door and on his way. I don't know if he believed any of this or not, and it really doesn't matter. All I know is that for many years the numbers of river steelhead far outnumbered the anglers who were qualified to fish for and catch them.

Those who could, did. Those who couldn't, bad-mouthed the hot sticks. There's nothing new about jealousy among anglers.

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors

Taken any smelt recently?

Some smelt like this are caught by ice anglers, but few run spawning streams now.

I was out salmon fishing one summer day last year, and while filling the inner soul with tasty food, someone finally asked a question I had wanted to answer for nearly a quarter-century.

One of the great mysteries of the past 25 years is the seemingly near extinction of Great Lakes smelt. They aren't extinct but one couldn't prove it by the successful spawning runs over past 25 years.

My first year at The Detroit News as their full-time staff outdoor writer came with a hire-in date of April 21, 1980. A night or two later I went smelt dipping at what was the greatest smelt hotspot of all time.

Tons of smelt were taken at the peak of the runs.

It was at Point Pelee, on the Ontario side of Lake Erie in April, 1980. Smelt back then assaulted tiny trickles of water flowing into the lake, and possibly millions of smelt would hit the beaches like an infantry battalion.

Ontario residents could use seines to take smelt at that time, on their waters, and two or three good men on a seine net would get so many fish with one swipe they couldn't lift it from the water. Nonresident visitors to the popular Ontario netting site were limited to the use of hand dip nets.

That was fine because anyone with a dip net could take more smelt in two hours than could be eaten in a year. My first visit found me done netting after two dips. I had 50 pounds of smelt, and some of my new co-workers at the newspaper asked me to bring them some smelt for dinner.

I did, and kept about 10 pounds for myself. A few days later I was dipping smelt at the old Singing Bridge on US-23 near AuGres, Michigan. It was the usual rowdy crowd; people getting drunk, eating live smelt, falling into Lake Huron, and in general, making complete idiots of themselves.

Smelt hotspots were many throughout Michigan and Ontario.

Again, two dips that night produced more smelt than I wanted but some neighbors were hungry for a mess. I divvied up my catch among three families, and all were happy for the fresh fish.

Smelt seemed to hang around for four or five more years, and then it was as if someone had flipped the switch. Smelt disappeared from Point Pelee, from the Detroit and St. Clair rivers near Detroit, and some key locations like the old Singing Bridge (years ago it hummed when a car crossed over it) and the AuSable River mouth showed signs of decline.

Next came Lake Michigan. The big runs off the Platte River, Otter Creek and the Frankfort piers and much farther south, tapered off, and two years later people who once dipped at Saugatuck and South Haven complained of few or no smelt.

I heard of a few good dipping nights on Lake Superior near the Keweenaw Peninsula, and some tiny streams that enter Lake Michigan near Manistique provided fair dipping. But, when compared to the great spring nights of 25-35 years ago, smelt numbers have plummeted.

I still hear tales there are lots of smelt in the Great Lakes, but if so, very few are spawning in tributary streams anymore. Where have all the huge smelt schools gone? Are they spawning in the big lake?

Lots of questions but mighty few answers.

It's a good question, and no one has a solid answer. Many blame it on alewives that eat tiny smelt. If that is so, what caused the crash of alewives in Lake Huron some years ago? That lake is nearly barren of forage fish before alewives invaded the Great Lakes decades ago.

I'm just an outdoor writer who tries to keep up with things. Many smelt disappeared before zebra mussels appeared, but many more have disappeared since their arrival. Are the lakes too clean to hold smelt? Is there too little forage for baby smelt to feed on? Are smelt in a state of slow depletion. Should the ever-unpopular cormorant take the blame?

Many dippers have taken smelt over the years, but in the early 1980s when smelt numbers were high, they were high everywhere. When they crashed, even where netting wasn't popular, they seem to have vanished.

Smelt dipping (or as some hardcore drunks called it –– smelt drinking) when a run of fish moved in, the cry went up: "The smelt are running!"
Seldom is that cry heard these days. No one seems to have a handle on the topic, but many suspect changes in water quality, the accidental introduction of foreign exotic species such as round goby, etc., and others feel smelt numbers are a cyclic up-and-down thing.

Smelt are cyclic but this lack of fish is of great concern.

Smelt numbers also seem to be down somewhat in those inland lakes where they were introduced about 100 years ago. Winter smelt fishing can be great fun on Green Lake near Interlochen, Crystal Lake at Beulah, Higgins Lake near Roscommon and other scattered inland lakes, but even on these inland lakes, the numbers seem down and the fish are much smaller.

One thing is certain: few areas attract huge smelt numbers anymore. A few diehard dippers still go out, and measure their catch as successful if they take enough fish for one meal.

If this is a cyclic phenomenon, I hope it gets it out of its system soon, and allow smelt numbers to rebound. And then, perhaps if enough old goats like me are still around, we may once again thrill to the dippers' rallying cry: "The smelt are running!"

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors