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TCTU SPONSOR
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| President's Corner |
12/4/2007 |
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I hope you all had a successful 2007 trout fishing season. My stream trout season ended on a rainy Sunday, but that didn’t keep me off the river. My Laughing Trout friends and I had a nice pot-luck dinner on the Rush River to celebrate another fine year of trout fishing.
I’ve had a busy autumn representing the Twin Cities Chapter of Trout Unlimited. The Trout Unlimited National Meeting was held in Boise, ID September 12-15. (Insert Larry Craig joke here) I attended the meeting with Elliott Olson and John Lenczewski, both long time members of the Minnesota State Council of TU. Both Elliott and I had a chance to do some fishing in Idaho and across the border in Oregon. Fishing on the SF Boise River and Owyhee rivers was fantastic! The meeting started off great. There was a slide show of all the projects around the country that TU has done. It was very impressive. The general session consisted of TU’s 5 year plan: 1, protect important federal and state lands. 2, Develop and Implement responsible energy. 3, Promote private land protection and 4, defend against unwise development. Then, the fireworks started! TU National was in the news a few months ago and not for any of the great reasons that make you a TU member. The stream access issue was the subject of turbulent meetings and political shenanigans. In the end, the grassroots faction of the organization stood up to the East Coast “good ol’ boys” and prevailed, keeping the ability for TU to get involved in local access disputes.
Also in September, I was invited by the National Wildlife Federation to attend a “fly-in” in Washington, DC. We met with many of Minnesota’s Congress people to discuss the Farm Bill and global climate change. Some of our elected officials from MN were more responsive than others on this topic, but I won’t get political. These issues will affect your trout fishing in the future.
Locally, the habitat improvement projects that we had planned for 2007 were pushed back because of the flooding in Southeast Minnesota. We had intended to start a habitat project on Hay Creek, just west of Red Wing. The DNR has its hands full down south and asked us to put these projects off until they have the resources to do the work.
TCTU has moved its chapter meetings to REI in Bloomington. At our first meeting of the season, we invited Steve Klotz from the SE MN DNR. Steve had the dubious task of discussing the flooding that hit Southeastern Minnesota. Needless to say, it was a somber event. In November, our featured speaker was Mike Rolek from the Fly Angler. The topic of his presentation was bonefishing in the tropics. There will be no chapter meeting in December. The scheduled speaker in January is Tom Helgeson of Midwest Fly Fishing Magazine and the Great Waters Fly Fishing Expo. The Chapter meetings are fun and educational. I encourage you to come and bring a conservation minded friend or a fly-fishing buddy. Drawings for fishing equipment are held at each TCTU Chapter meeting. Chapter meetings are held the 4th Tuesday of the month. And please mark your calendars, the TCTU Fundraising Banquet is April 5, 2008.
We still need volunteers to help with fundraising. If you have the time to send a few letters out each week, we’d love to hear from you. Retirees would be perfect for this and it could be very rewarding to you and Trout Unlimited. The Chapter remains very active. We have many projects lined up for 2008. Please set aside a few hours next year to help protect our cold water resources. ~Steve Carlton
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