Thanks to the Friends of the Mississippi River, Mark Nemeth (DNR) and Matt Doth (Mahigan Outdoors) for the fabulous presentation on our home water, the Vermillion River.  If you missed the meeting, you can see it on our YouTube channel here.  Don't forget to subscribe! You can also download copies of the presentations below.

A new edition of the Hotline is available with lots of great news, including a special feature on a proposed hiking trail in the Minnesota Driftless.

by Bob Luck
According to my fishing log, I spent 323 days trout fishing in the last three years, with three streams accounting for over half the days: the Kinnickinnic at 87, the Rush at 56, and Hay Creek at 28.  In case you think I have a problem with overfishing, let me clarify that the number would have been higher if I hadn't mistakenly deleted three months of 2024.  My real problem is Driftless Derangement Syndrome.  I am one of those guys that zips right over the Vermillion river on the Highway 52 Bridge en route to the Bluff Country.  I have fished it only five times in the last three years. It is getting tougher to ignore it, though.  

by Kevin Wier
Like many of you, some of my favorite moments in fly fishing haven’t involved me catching a fish, but rather helping family and friends to catch a fish on a fly rod.  One of my favorite memories is the day I helped both of my daughters get their first trout on a fly rod.  However, a close second has been getting other young people their first fish on a fly through my involvement with the Foster the Outdoors Mentor Program with Minnesota Trout Unlimited.  There’s an undeniable thrill and sense of accomplishment here that you can’t really get anywhere else.
In the most recent MNTU newsletter I chronicled the great season I had last year mentoring a young man named Beckett and his father Chad.  I won’t repeat everything here, but suffice it to say that they were both an absolute pleasure to be with and I consider myself lucky to have spent some quality time with them on the water.  You can see the full article on page 21 here

Thanks to the 290 members and supporters who participated in our survey!  You can see the results here:

by Jim Sauter
Greetings from the TCTU Streamkeepers.  
During the winter months I have been practicing my best imitations of the Green Heron and Esmeralda, the Sloth.  I plan to use both strategies when trout fishing this year.  I plan to use the Heron approach when on riffles and the Sloth approach at pools.  I have known some trout anglers that have even been known to get down their hands and knees on the ground and crawl to a pool or by a bank.  I confess, I have done this too.  Sometimes it is a bit crazy about the lengths we go to catch trout.
Our TCTU Streamkeeper group is almost ready to begin our 2025 monitoring season.  We currently have 38 Streamkeeper water monitoring volunteers on nine streams.    The streams we will be monitoring this summer include Belle Creek, Brown's Creek, Eagle Creek, Hay Creek, Little Cannon River, Mall of America/ Ike's Creek, South Branch of the Vermillion, Trout Brook, and the South Branch of the Whitewater River.  The "season" for monitoring will begin in April and conclude at the end of October.  We hope to have at least 10 chemical test readings on each stream over the course of the season.  Thank you to our many volunteers for their efforts in being our "eyes and ears" on these cold water fisheries.