Steelhead Fishing: Four Decades Ago

George Richey (left) with big fish and the late Stan Lievense at work
photo c. Dave Richey Outdoors ©2012

It was April 1, 1968, my second year of guiding brown trout, salmon and steelhead fishermen, and I was scouting the Little Manistee River for clients who would arrive the next day.

The river was rain-swollen and murky, and in another hour of heavy rain, it would be a foot higher and the color of chocolate milk. I thought a big buck steelhead was on a shallow gravel bar an easy cast from shore, and brother George shinnied up a tree and stood on a big branch.

"That fish is huge," George muttered to me. "It's bigger than any steelhead I've ever seen, and his cheeks and gill covers are an orange-red color. It is a truly awesome fish.

The fish was huge at about 25 pounds; Could I hold him

"You know about where he is. Cast a copper spinner upstream and reel hard when I tell you."

I cast, and George said to cast another six feet farther upstream in hopes of getting the spinner down in the heavy current. My next cast, he said, was on target.

"That's the spot," he said. "Keep casting to it. Reel hard now!"

I reeled, and nothing happened. Cast after cast went into the right spot, and I'd reel fast enough to make the spinner blade turn over in the current, and after 40 or 50 casts, George yelled "Hit him!"

The hooks were slammed home as I felt the strike, and nothing happened, so I pounded the rod tip back to set the hooks again. The huge steelhead rolled to the surface, his cheeks and gill covers glowing like evening campfire embers, and the fish started upstream, his dorsal fin creasing the surface like a shark. Not fast but with great power.

I moved along the bank but stayed downstream. The trick was to make the giant fish fight the rod pressure and the river current. We duked it out in the soggy rain for 10 minutes before the fish swapped ends and headed downstream into a deep hole. I was reeling while running but still the fish tangled the line in underwater brush and broke me off.

"How big," I asked George. He'd caught steelhead to almost 20 pounds, and guessed this ponderous male was at least 25 pound, perhaps more.

It was the largest steelhead I’d hooked, before or since

Wow, you say. That's what I said, and of the thousands of steelhead I've caught before and since, it remains the largest one I've seen.
or hooked.

My point with this is that incident occurred back in the days of very few steelhead fishermen and lots of big fish. The Little Manistee River at that time had a huge run of spawning steelhead that averaged, according to the DNR, between 11 and 12 pounds. A 15-pounder wasn't anything special, and it took a 17- or 18-pounder to raise eyebrows.

That year, also on the Little Manistee River, I found a 30-yard stretch of gravel that was wall-to-wall fish. The bottom was honeycombed with spawning redds, and 15 or 20 feet away would be another redd, and every one held a female and one to four males. We fished only for the male fish because a hooked hen would take all the boys with her.

On that day I set a record of sorts. I hooked 30 steelhead in eight hours, and am proud to announce that I made a professional release on every fish. If you're unfamiliar with the phrase, a professional release means I lost every fish, one way or another.

Steelhead four decades ago far out-numbered anglers.

There were far more steelhead in those days than now. There are far more fishermen today than back then. It's easy to do the basic math; fewer fish are being sought by more anglers.

There are still some rather exciting days if anglers can find a spot where fishing pressure is minimal. A few years ago me and another man hooked 30 steelhead in a morning. We landed about half of them, and released each and every one. Those days seldom occur any more.

Low Lake Michigan water levels haven't helped. The Betsie River mouth has been so low in recent years that very few fish make it upstream. Rivers like the Manistee below Tippy Dam can be good at times, but the fishing pressure is just too much to suit me. I can take a half-day of fishing in a crowd, and then get turned off by the whole thing.

That doesn't mean that you should, but it's easy for me to remember way back when to those special occasions when a steelhead fisherman would be unlucky to see two other anglers all day. And, back in the day, people didn't crowd you or wade down through a spawning bed. People had manners, which are hard to come by these days.

They had some class. The fish were larger and more plentiful, and the rivers weren't swarming with anglers. It was a different era, and the steelhead fishing now is still fairly good, but remembering what it was like 40-45 years ago is enough to make a grown man cry.

Personally, it's my thought that we'll probably never see the likes of those days again but remembering them remains a great thrill.

River guiding 35-40 years ago

Dave Richey (left) and George Richey with big Chinook salmon.

Those people who just got started steelhead fishing in the last few years really missed out on the best fishing ever in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Superb numbers of steelhead were being planted all around the state, natural reproduction was fairly good and the Betsie, Little Manistee and Platte rivers offered sport that was as good as it gets.

There was some natural steelhead reproduction 35-40 years ago, and the DNR was planting fish as well. The number of anglers who knew how to catch steelhead were few, and the numbers of fish available in spring and fall 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, my late twin brother George Richey and I became the Tres Amigos, and we cut a wide swath through the spring and fall spawning brown trout, salmon and steelhead runs.

Reliving a time that salmon and trout fishermen will never see again.

We were three angler-guides who helped teach anglers that snagging fish was both stupid and wrong. Snagging of salmon began because the DNR told people that spawning salmon don’t feed once the hit river water. They may not feed but will attack anything that approaches their spawning redd.

Snagging became rampant back then, but we fished with No. 4, 6 and 8 single-hook nymphs and wet flies, and it may sound like bragging but it's not: we were good guides, and there was no need to snag fish. We fair-hooked fish on a regular basis. The sheer numbers of fish available meant if we spooked them in one spot, a short distance away would be another batch of willing fish.

The spring 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 steelies in a single day. Not all fish were landed, but George and John experimented with and tied various flies while I handled the bookings for 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 from one day to the next, and we seldom had any 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 over dinner, and decide who would fish where the next day.

We were matched to small groups of anglers by age and type.

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 fishing. We treated everyone the same; we'd fish from sun-up to sundown every day if clients wanted, and then clean fish at night and 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. Often the fish would take, and we'd have a big fight on our hands.

One thing captivated us: putting people into big fish for the first time. The smiles that crossed their faces 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 I vividly remember most of them.

John McKenzie (above) was a popular young guide and part of Tres Amigos.

There wasn't anything we wouldn't do for each other. John was known to tie flies by hand on the river bank when 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 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.

We reigned supreme for 10 consecutive years as a fly-fishing trio.

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 had.

We put people into fall-spawning rainbows that had tiny tails, fat waists, and 23-inch fish that weighed 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 tackle busters of the highest degree, 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 has been gone for eight years, and is dearly missed. John McKenzie phoned some time ago, and we took a trip 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 fly-fishing guides on the rivers back when big salmon and trout ruled the state.

And that, my friends, is something we'll never forget.