The word “humpy” has a lot of meanings. It’s the name of a deer hair trout fly popularized by Jackson Hole angler Jack Dennis. The fly floats like a cork and catches trout as well as any fly in the fast water around Jackson Hole and pretty much the rest of the world.
You might also come across a few weird jokes that include the word “humpy” but we won’t go there. Some people might even mix the name up with the children’s Humpty-Dumpty nursery rhyme.
Where we will go are pink salmon. They are the smallest and most numerous Pacific salmon. They’re called “humpies” because when they migrate up the rivers to spawn, the males develop a pronounced humped back. I’ll get back to that, but first the story about how this whole humpy business started.
A month ago, my friend Jason Randall invited me to fish the king salmon run on the Manistique River in Michigan’s upper peninsula. The kings, along with coho, pink, sockeye and even Atlantic salmon were stocked in the Great Lakes as early as the late 1800s, but have been more regularly stocked since the 1960s. The Manistique River kings enter the river out of Lake Michigan and the run typically peaks in mid-October.
Jason and a group of his friends have been fishing the run for 30 years. This year we met on the river earlier than usual because some members of the group couldn’t get there later because of other commitments. The hope was we’d still catch the beginning of the king salmon run. If not, there was sure to be some humpies in the river and maybe a few steelhead.
The flip side of the trip was that some of the guys hunt ruffed grouse and woodcock in the mornings and then meet up with the rest of the group on the river to fish in the afternoons. That meant there would be a bunch of pointing dogs in our camp. I declined the hunting part of the trip mostly because my shotgun skills are embarrassing, but I was keyed to see all the pointers. I’d already made friends with Jason’s German wirehaired pointer, Walker, several years ago and was anxious to meet the other dogs.
The gist of the story is this was a long-standing annual trip happening earlier than usual and nobody was sure about the outcome. On the first day most of us headed to the river, while one headed to the woods to hunt. The fishermen staked out a section of water off an island that had produced well for them in the past.
It’s not a wilderness experience. The run goes by a concrete dam that was part of a paper mill operation in the past. The river was low and running at moderate speed, which made it easy to spot the water that would hold salmon.
Jason walked me through the basic salmon fishing rig that is popular on the river. You attach weight to the leader and below that rig two hooks spaced about 18 inches apart. When you tie the hooks to the leader, you add a slip knot over the hook shank and insert a short piece of brightly colored yarn to attract the salmon’s attention. I used florescent pink and chartreuse yarn. The rig is cast slightly upstream and allowed to sink to the bottom where it ticks along the streambed. It’s fished on a tight line to detect strikes.
It took me a while to get the hang of casting the heavily weighted rig and detecting strikes. I missed three strikes before I landed my first humpy. The fish was probably three pounds and fought well. The humpies were stacked up in a hole upriver from where the king salmon usually hold, which made it convenient for me to practice my technique while the other guys fished for kings.
It’s possible that one king salmon was hooked up that first day. You can tell a king because they run ferociously upstream and then often turn back downstream toward turbulent water. That first king broke off. A few more kings were hooked up and lost during the trip. Jason said you really need more fish in the river to land a king because typically you’ll break off three or four for every one you land. However, we did have the humpies! All it took was going to their holding water, making a good cast and you’d hook up.
Each morning we set our chairs out on the island and a few anglers sat while the others fished. When someone got tired another took his place. Ned Lemaster has fished with the group for a number of years and always brings a folding table out to the island and covers it with food. One day he cooked breakfast on the river. You can’t beat that. And there were the dogs. Walker came to the river every day. Ned brought Carter, his Llewellin setter. John Dost’s Brittiany, Goober, and his black Labrador, Tank, hunted with him every morning.
John’s dogs found grouse, but the leaves were still on the trees and shooting was tough. When Ned and Carter accompanied him one morning, they came back with a grouse and a woodcock that Ned promptly cooked at his riverside table for all of us to taste.
No one ever landed a king salmon, but you can’t call the trip a bust. Every morning we figured the kings would come upriver because that’s the way fishermen think. They never did, but we caught humpies and steelhead, we ate meals by the river, told stories and hung out with some great hunting dogs.
Somehow humpies don’t get much respect in the hierarchy of Pacific salmon. I’d never caught a humpy before, and they were all right with me. Maybe they aren’t as glamorous as kings, but they fight hard for their size and allowed me to practice a new fly fishing technique.
We’ll be back for the kings next year, and I hope we get some, but I still won’t mind if I catch a few humpies.
Visit EdEngleFlyFishing.com to see Ed Engle’s blog, “The Lone Angler Journal.”
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