President’s Message:
Dear Mid-Missouri Trout Unlimited Members,
Our June 4th meeting will be the annual Hot Dog Burn beginning at 6 pm. The meeting will be at the Collins shelter. The Collins shelter is where we had the meeting last year. Spouses, friends and family are invited. If you are coming please bring a side dish or desert to share. The hot dogs, paper plates, plastic utensils and condiments will be provided. For directions to the Collins shelter which is in Stephens Lake Park go to https://www.como.gov/contacts/collins-shelter/. There is a fire pit, if you would like a campfire bring some wood and have a plan for putting it safely out before we leave.
We had an Iowa Driftless Trip in May it was a blast. Thank you Curt Morgret and Bill Lamberson for your trip planning and for the Friday night steak dinner. We had a great time and I’m sure there will be lots of stories. If you were there and have some pictures from the trip send them to Curt for a presentation in the fall. If you came and stayed only during the planned dates you missed most of the rain. If you tacked a few days on either end of the trip, like many of us did (including me), you experienced some intense thunderstorms. So congratulations and thanks to the trip planners for your weather planning prowess. Those of you who attended the near freezing outdoor April chapter meeting will be aware long range weather forecasting is not one of my skills.
A trip this year to the Routt National Forest which is twelve miles southwest of Yampa Colorado is also in the planning stages. We will be be camping the week of August 18 and staying in the Bear Lake Campground where we stayed last year. This was a great time last year and I hope you can make it to this year’s trip. This not an official Trout Unlimited trip so we all travel at our own risk and expense and Trout Unlimited assume no risk. If you would like to join us please contact Mike Kruse. All of us who attended last year love to talk about the trip so if you want to know more about the area please ask any of us that went last year.
We hope to see you at the Hot Dog Burn. Incidentally I have never seen a burnt hot dog at this event so we may need to contact our founding members to learn the history of this event’s name.
Doug Grove
Advocate for Trout:
If you are not familiar with TU National Conservation Agenda, it has four ways to care for trout:
Restore
Reconnect
Protect
Sustain
A recent email has several easy ways we can help:
RESTORE - Congress needs to pass the Good Samaritan Act to allow us to clean up abandoned mines with risking being responsible for future damage.
PROTECT - The Farm Bill is the largest source of private land conservation funding in the nation, but not everyone realizes the impact it has on coldwater fisheries. Support a farm bill for fish and conservation. As a side note a farm bill can significantly help the small farmers and landowners.
PROTECT - Oil and Gas Reform to update the leasing in permitting on federal lands to discourage energy speculation and assure companies clean up afterwards.
RECONNECT - The Snake River basis has some of the best salmon and steelhead habitat in the Pacific Northwest, but it is seeing a major drop in populations. The solution is to remove the four lower dams. If Washington does not act, these fish will face extinction.
PROTECT - Save Bristol Bay. Despite a decade of opposition, the Pebble Mine is moving closer to reality.
Follow this link to to help: https://standup.tu.org/?_zs=hW5wb&_zl=HOl14
Conservation Notes:
There’s hope for endangered salmon and steelhead. TU recently received an award for protecting them, https://www.tu.org/magazine/from-the-president/theres-hope-for-endangered-salmon-and-steelhead/?utm_source=informz&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=none&_zs=hW5wb&_zl=FX454
The California North Coast hosts famous salmon and steelhead waters such as the Klamath, Eel, Russian, Trinity, and Smith Rivers. This region is a mix of rugged public lands, private timber lands, and tribal lands. It is the heart of what is now California’s largest coho salmon habitat restoration program: Trout Unlimited’s North Coast Coho and Steelhead Project, https://www.northcoastcohoproject.org/. North Coast Coho are endangered, but our work to remove fish passage barriers, upgrade or decommission forest roads, improve water quality and habitat and stream function is paving the way for recovery. Since 1998, the project has removed 14 major fish barriers, reconnecting 70 miles of stream; upgraded or decommissioned 1,441 road-stream crossings and treated 569 miles of roads, keeping 71,000 dump trucks worth of sediment out of streams; and placed over 7,500,336 pieces of large wood in 130 miles of stream. In the Russian River watershed, TU’s California Water Program is reconnecting and improving dry season flow in priority coho and steelhead streams by removing barriers, creating innovative water supply solutions for landowners, and enhancing water quality monitoring and planning.
Inflation Reduction Act and Bi-partisan Infrastructure Act funding is saving cutthroats. TU is partnering with National Fish and Wildlife, the Forest Service and landowners to install fish barriers with money from these laws. In the past rock barriers have not held out the rainbows that threaten the native cuts. They hope concrete barriers will solve the problem.
More on the Iowa Driftless Trip:
As Doug said the trip was great! Gary shared a few of his photos for the newsletter and Curt will be assembling more for a presentation.
By the way, there was no cicada activity there, but we caught some nice fish. Doug, Mark from the TU Climate Change Workgroup and I got to see trout HAMMER cicadas at Westover Farms on Memorial Day. Bring your cicada patterns and try them at Stephens Lake during the Hot Dog Burn.
Double Haul Tip:
This Simon Gawesworth 7 minute video shows 4 steps to learn the double haul, https://www.tu.org/magazine/fishing/tip-the-double-haul/?utm_source=informz&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=none&_zs=hW5wb&_zl=KX454
Dry Fly Tips:
Tom Rosenbauer teaches us a bit more about dry fly fishing, which is many anglers’ favorite method of fishing. He goes over when to fish with dry flies in terms of times of year, when aquatic or terrestrial insects are present and then what to look for. Then you have to decide which fly to use, which is just one of the many puzzles to solve. https://www.tu.org/magazine/fishing/tip-dry-fly-fishing/?utm_source=informz&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=none&_zs=hW5wb&_zl=BNM44 The tips start about 2 minutes into the video.
Reading the River:
Tom Rosebauer offers tips on finding fish. He looks for moving water and foam. Watch this to see more https://www.tu.org/magazine/fishing/tip-fishing-a-new-river/?utm_source=informz&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=none&_zs=hW5wb&_zl=9Ol14
Keep sending me information to share with our chapter and enjoying fishing,
Jeff Holzem
MMTU Newsletter Editor
MMTU Advocacy Coordinators
Ozark Council Climate Change Coordinator
President
Doug Grove
Vice President
Travis Figg
Past President
John Wenzlick
Secretary
Bill Lamberson
Treasurer
Ty Figg
Financial Reviewer
Curt Morgret
At Large Board Members
Lynn Kleopfer & Eric Cunningham
Banquet Chairs
Curt Morgret
Alternative Funding Committee
Chalen Jackson
Education Director
John Wenzlick
Stream Team
John Wenzlick
Membership
Curt Morgret
Conservancy
Bill Lamberson
Conservancy
Sam Potter
e-Newsletter
Jeff Holzem
Web Master
Ty Figg
Facebook editor
Ben Moore
Event Planning
Doug Grove
Advocacy
Jeff Holzem
Diversity
Open
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