Like many of Kyle Riedman’s friends, I have my own fond remembrances of the young outdoorsman who tragically passed away last week.
One of them occurred at a Forest Ranger get-together at Bug Lake, where nine-year-old Kyle, his father Doug and I went to fish for red salmon.
Our guides were John Scanlon and his boys.
We towed the canoes up to the lake on my cart and when we got there Doug discovered that a bear had bitten a hole in the bow of his canoe.
John came to the rescue with some magic boat patch that he always carried with him.
Once on the water we had several fish and got a few in the canoe. It was just enough to take to shore and have a shore lunch of red salmon over a campfire.
It was a great day to show the boys some fishing fun in the Adirondacks.
A couple years later my brother Bob and I were perch fishing out on Fourth Lake by Alger Island, when Doug and Kyle came out on snowmobiles to see how we were doing.
Brother Bob was set up a little ways away, jigging away.
Kyle walked over and started to tell him how to catch perch.
At just about the same time, Bob pulled up a big one and added it to his bucket which was nearly full to the top with nice perch.
Kyle came back to where we were and said, “I guess I don’t have to tell him how to catch perch.” We all got a chuckle out of that one.
A couple years later I invited Doug and Kyle to go salmon fishing on Brother Bob’s big boat on Lake Ontario.
We had to leave at zero dark thirty to get to the boat by daylight for the best fishing.
Doug was driving and it was very foggy. A deer came out of the fog, and Doug just missed it.
As serious as any little boy could be, Kyle said, “Mom sure wouldn’t have liked that if you dented her car.”
We got out on the water, which was tad rough that day. Kyle kept saying, “Dad, you don’t look too good.” But Doug weathered the storm.
We caught fish that day and one big one hit and ran right at the boat.
I got the fish past the down riggers and put the pole in Kyle’s small hands.
I had to hold onto Kyle and the pole, or the fish may have pulled him overboard.
After a long battle we landed the biggest fish of the day: a 30-pound king salmon.
At one point there was kind of a lull in the fishing and little boys have a tendency to get bored.
But Brother Bob had the answer for that. He had lots of tackle stored under the seats, that he said he was never going to use again.
Kyle got out the big boxes, and like a kid in a candy store, sorted through the spoons. He went home that day with the biggest fish and enough tackle to catch many more.
Just this past summer I found some pictures of that trip. I caught up with Kyle as he was mowing a lawn in town and gave them to him.
This week his mother Judy showed me the picture taken on the boat of Kyle with Brother Bob holding the fish that was almost bigger than the young boy.
On another ice fishing day when Kyle was 14, he, Doug and I had the bay behind Alger Island covered with tip-ups.
Kyle was chasing flags with the snowmobile as some were far away.
One flag went up by shore and Kyle went over by snowmobile to check it out.
He yelled back that the line had gone off the reel, and we saw him hauling the line in.
By the time we got there, he had line all over the place and the fish was nearing the hole. “It’s a big one!” he said.
He had to let it go back out a couple of times before he got it through the hole—a five-pound laketrout.
It put a big smile on his face for the picture I took.
Kyle followed Doug and me around on our fall and spring trap lines on the days he could join us.
One of those days was when we were spring trapping a two-mile snowshoe line around Balsam and Stink Lakes.
The snow was pretty deep that spring and we had to break trail.
Kyle was just a small boy and was taking two steps to our one on his smaller snowshoes. He never complained going around the whole line with us that day. I know for sure that he slept well that night.
One fall, Doug and I had a pine marten trap line about two miles into the Blue Ridge Wilderness Area, and Kyle went along with us on pickup day.
He was a little older then, and now the question was, could we older guys keep up with him?
Joining us was their golden lab, Scout, who knocked me off my feet a couple of times.
The traps weren’t too far off the trail, and we had attached a little piece of flagging to mark the trap locations.
Kyle got to the traps before we did, and at one set I can still hear him saying, “Dad we got a beauty!”
It was a nice male marten.
Then we got another one at the last set of the day. It was another great day in the Adirondack woods.
When Kyle was 12, I introduced him and his dad to snowshoe hare hunting in Third Lake Swamp.
My dog Brownie chased a hare around, and Doug took a shot and missed. It came by me and I got it with one shot from my .22.
Kyle came over and said, “Mr. Lee, you shot that with a .22.” He took a hind foot to show off to his friends at school.
Kyle was growing up so quickly into a young man. He started his own lawn mowing business to pay for school and helped his dad with their firewood and snow plowing business.
He met the love of his life, Sarah Morrison, who we got to meet at the opening of the Adirondacks National Exhibition of American Watercolors at View this summer. They just glowed when they were together and I was happy for him.
Doug and Kyle got a couple new dogs: one to bird hunt and one to hare hunt with.
The hare dog was Brooke the Wonder Dog, and what a hare hound she turned out to be.
She’s just a little thing, but she sure can run a hare.
I shot at a couple running in front of her but never got one. I just love to hear a hound run, and she has a great voice.
We got out a few times together in the past couple years.
The last time I saw Kyle was just two weeks ago today. He invited me out to hunt hare with him in the Third Lake Swamp.
When I got there, Brooke was already running a second hare after they had shot the first one.
Kyle had lost his radio and had to backtrack to find it in the snow. He caught Brooke, and we went out to the trucks.
That was my last day with Kyle in the woods he loved so much.