The photo above is just typical of some browns we used to catch.

These were big fish, and they were so plentiful in the 1960s and early 1970s that it was very easy to catch
Doing so was easy. Much too easy for a good fisherman like I was back in the day.

No brag, just fact: I was a very good stream fisherman. I could catch fish, lots of them and some very big ones, when no one else was doing any good. My methods were 100 percent legal, and the difference between me and 99 percent of the other anglers on our rivers was I knew the river intimately, paid attention to locations of holding fish, tried new areas on a regular basis and learned to obtain the best drift to work my fly to big fish.

That’s easy to say but much more difficult than it sounds. That’s where the skill level worked in my favor.

My vision was excellent in those days. Spotting tiny seams of current, and made putting the fly to the fish on the first cast every time, and an unspooked fish often hit the first time you cast to it. My method made getting close and undetected by the fish possible. Conquering that part made my presentation easy.

Spring and fall steelhead? No problem. Fall brown trout with fish to 15 pounds? It was as simple as sitting down in an easy chair. Chinook and coho salmon? No sweat. Lake trout were even available in the Leland River in those early years, and until they shut the river down to fall fishing, it was possible to easily catch a five-fish limit without a problem.

Mind you, 35-45 years ago there were far more of all these grand game fish, and before you think I was a game hog by bragging about my exploits and limit catches, consider this: Ninety-five to 99 percent of the time I didn’t keep a trout or salmon. All these big fish were released. It was almost like a personal ego stroke.

The fishing back then was nothing short of wonderful.

Everything was hooked, fought hard and fast, and was quickly released. The fishing seemed so easy, especially after fishing every day, that in many cases while guiding anglers, I’d go looking for more fish for my clients. It was an excuse that allowed me to look for the hardest fish to catch.

My idea was to find a salmon or trout buried back in under a log jam, behind a large rock, tucked under a nasty sweeper, and those were my daily challenges. Fish out in the open on spawning beds offered little challenge and I’d put my clients on them. I wanted my fish to have all the odds stacked in their favor, and then if it was possible to catch one, it became a feat that made me feel good.

That was the challenge. Going after the most  difficult fish in the river became a part of almost every day of guiding. Often, my clients would ask if they could come along, hoping to learn something else that might make them more successful.

The fish in those days, and especially before 1974 when the DNR put in their fish harvest weir on the lower Platte River, the runs of fish into the Platte were simply incredible. There was a bonanza of salmon and trout available to anglers that simply staggered the imagination. Most people who fished back then were content to snag fish in the deep holes, and most never  found scads of big fish in small pockets of water.

Today’s anglers have trouble contemplating the vast number of fish available in most streams during that era. To say the rivers were almost awash with fish wouldn’t be too much of an exaggeration.

There were days in the late 1960s and early 1970s when a limit (five fish daily at that time) of big brown trout were possible for at least 30 days. The males were golden brown with great hooked jaws, and those males were often mistaken for carp by clueless anglers. Seldom would they be set straight because we were running a guide service in those  days, and the location of such fish was important to us.

One spot I never told people about featured a sweeper that had toppled into the river. The tip of the tree almost touched the far bank, and the current had dug a two-foot-deep hole under the tip. Every brown trout in the area wanted to spawn in that spot, and since it was so snaggy, most people got up on the bank and walked around it.

Seven days in a row would produce a limit  of returned fish, and they ran from seven to 15 pounds each. Not convinced?

The Platte River had a run of fall-spawning rainbows. They spawned in only two spots, and I knew where those areas were. The males would be 22 to 24 inches long and weighed 12-14 pounds. I tried to convince the Cadillac DNR fisheries biologist that they existed, and he told me they were salmon.

The fall-spawning rainbows just disappeared after the lower DNR weir was installed.

I caught a spawning male and female the next day, which was my day offm abd carried them up to a 100-gallon cooler filled with cold river water in my car. I drove both fish to Cadillac. I had to shame the biologist to get him off his can and out to my car, and asked him to pick them up, one at a time.

Any pressure on the hen’s belly produced a stream of golden orange eggs, and the male would produce a steady spurt of milt. He then wanted to know where they were being caught and I refused to tell him. I told him it was his business to get out into the field, and learn what was going on. I felt I’d given him enough clues over the length of time it took me to convince him  that I’d found something very special .

I once was hunting grouse near Otter Creek, just a few miles north of the Platte River mouth, and found that tiny stream full of salmon. It had been open to fishing for years but when I told the biologist about it, the creek was closed the next year. It was too small to fish but snaggers and spearers had  a great time after it was closed to legal legal angling.

The nearby Betsie River was amply supplied with big brown trout runs, and a favorite spot then was at the upstream end of the US-31 bridge south of Benzonia and on the north side of the river. Brown trout held there from late August or early September through November, and most people walked right past them as they hurried upstream toward the old Homestead Dam.

It’s not that the upstream area held any more fish. It’s just that this was where other people were fishing, and anglers, being gregarious folks, gravitated to areas frequented by many other anglers.

We were always content to take the path least traveled, the one that no one else fished because they didn’t know it held fish. As a guide, it was my place to educate them … after they paid the daily guide fee.

The fall months from early October through November provided a smorgasbord of brown trout and salmon and steelhead action. Most of my anglers in those days could care less about catching browns, or fall steelhead that followed the salmon upstream to feed on free-drifting eggs, or the sporadic fall-spawning rainbow trout.

They wanted salmon, and there was no shortage of chinook and coho salmon in those days. I could walk people into different areas every day, and they could catch a limit. In fact, some found this fishing too easy and wanted a greater challenge. That’s when I began sharing my passion for a fishing challenge with other people, and it was great fun.

Less anyone think I’m making this up there are still some photos in my files of those bygone days when salmon and trout were so plentiful that it sent a fishing guide looking for a greater fishing challenge.

I experienced something that was wondrous and exciting for 10 years, but when the allure of massive catches and 100 percent release began to pale, it was time to shift into the third stage of trout fishing: where the challenge and the leveling of odds began to fall in favor of the game fish.

Now, I still seek that ultimate challenge. And like those outdoor magazine art directors and editors I dealt with years ago often said: “I’m not sure what I want but I’ll recognize it when I see it.”

I now recognize that what we had 35-45 years ago was something very special, and if one is lucky, may experience it once in their lifetime. Those truly were unforgettable days.

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors