QUOTE OF THE MONTH  
Bob Luck, Woolly Buggers Don't Count
"A friend told me that fish caught on Woolly Buggers don't count, but that is sour grapes."

Spoiler alert.  I agree with Bob.  Catching trout with streamers do count and are a key strategy for catching big fish. I discovered when reading Bob's book that the title is a bit misleading since he caught a 20 incher using this classic fly.  Personally, I have caught some of my largest trout using a fancy variation of the classic Woolly Bugger called the JQ Streamer (i.e., formerly the CQ Streamer).  When taking the Orvis fly tying class in St. Louis Park, guess what fly was the first one on the list?  WB!  A classic.  I have included fly tying instructions for these flies in the photo section.  Thanks to Paul Johnson for his contribution.
 
INTRODUCTION
Greetings from the TCTU Streamkeepers.  Welcome to 2026!  As always, we are anxiously anticipating the upcoming season.  I have found this to be a good time to restock my fly boxes.  Perhaps some more Woolly Buggers?
 
One of my fishing friends braved the 25 degree temps recently in Wisconsin and caught a lot of fish.  He was finding success with some egg patterns.  I personally usually wait until the temps reach the 40's. 

I visited Waseca yesterday, and got a Minnesota geography lesson from a friendly farmer who told me his family has a “medium-sized” 1700-acre corn and soybean operation in Faribault County.  The county seat of Faribault County is Blue Earth.  Faribault County is just south of Blue Earth County, whose county seat is Mankato.  Faribault is the county seat of Rice County which is Northeast of Blue Earth County.  In between Blue Earth and Rice Counties is Waseca County, whose county seat is, thankfully for a poor cheesehead like me, Waseca.
If you have bothered to read this far, you may be wondering what I was doing in Waseca.   I was attending a singularly important event for trout anglers:  the 2026 Minnesota Neonic Forum.

Twin Cities TU will hold elections for its Board of Directors at the annual meeting on January 26, 2026.  We have seven open board seats and six qualified candidates.  Voting will be done by show of hands for the following slate: 

Current Board members running for a 3-year term
(click on name to learn about them)
Brian Bredenberg
Tommy Bonner
Mike Rude
Doug Moran

New Candidates
Brad Poff (running for a 3-year term)
Brad has been a volunteer for a number of organizations, including University of Wisconsin, School of Veterinary Medicine Alumni Association and Alumni Advisory Board, and UpEnding Parkinson’s.  He was co-founder and GM of Augmentix, Inc. a medical device company that was sold to Boston Scientific.   Brad has recently become active with TCTU and wants to do more to help with day-to-day activities toward accomplishing overall organizational goals.In particular, as a scientist/veterinarian, he hopes to help network with environmental leaders, understand publications and learn from other chapter efforts.

Joe Slavec  (running for a 2-year term to replace James White)
Joe is an avid trout angler and "ecologist at heart" who feels a calling to pass on the resource and help in the conservation of trout streams.  He is the owner of Minneapolis Garage Builders and a volunteer with Sigma Chi and the Lake Sarah association.  Joe hopes to add energy and enthusiasm to support and develop current goals, and provide creative thinking for future goals related to our cause.

Our State Council, MNTU, is recruiting a Communications Director.  For details on the position, please see the PDF document below.  If you feel you may be a good fit, please apply (details on how to apply are in the PDF).  If you know somebody who might be a good fit, please share!

Our friends at our sister chapter in Wisconsin are gearing up for their annual fundraiser.  They have raffle tickets available, and are looking for donations to their silent auction.  Read below to see how you can help.

The Annual Meeting of Twin Cities TU will be held on Monday, January 26th 2026 at 7 pm at the Gnome Craft Pub in St. Paul and via Zoom.  Agenda and Registration information follow:
Register here
​
Agenda:
5:30  Social time (food and beverage available for a fee)
7:00  Kickoff and President's Report
7:10  Treasurers' Report
7:15  Introduction to Board Candidates and Election of Board Members
7:30  Discussion and Vote on Proposed Bylaw Changes
7:45  "The State of the State"--Presentation by John  Lenczewski, Executive Director, MNTU
8:30  Finish

Anybody is welcome to attend this meeting, but only members with dues paid will be allowed to vote.

​ Check out the latest newsletter from our friends at the Driftless Area Restoration Effort!

by Bob Luck
After spending yet another season missing almost all of the fish that were pointed out to me by my angling buddies, I decided that enough is enough: I have to learn how to spot them. It is pretty embarrassing that I can’t even find them as well as my wife, who has zero interest in fishing, and an eyeglass prescription that is so strong she can’t see the barn without glasses, let alone the door.
My first stop was YouTube.  Search “sight fishing” and you will find plenty of videos of hotshot anglers explaining their top tips for spotting trout, followed by a demonstration where they point to the river, enhance the scene for clueless viewers with an arrow pointing to a shadowy figure which may or may not look like a trout, then wade in and catch the fish which is usually enormous, especially if the narrator has a Kiwi accent.  I did pick up some useful, if obvious, tips such as “stand on higher ground”, “put the sun at your back” and “look for movement”.  After watching a half-dozen videos that all held pretty much the same half-dozen tips, I decided that YouTube had taken me as far as I was going to get.  I needed field practice.

by Jim Sauter, Streamkeepers Coordinator
​Welcome TCTU members, Streamkeepers Volunteers, and Friends. 
 
We are about midway through December, and we are almost ready to close the books on 2025.  This has been a great year for TCTU Streamkeepers.
 
Thank you to all our volunteers and TCTU for your support.  We appreciate all you have done for cold water streams in Minnesota and helping to ensure clean water for future generations.
 
Our TCTU Streamkeeper teams wrapped up the bulk of our work for 2025 at the end of October.  Monitoring of salt levels, temperatures, clarity, and water temperatures during the off season will continue at a much more limited basis.  Early in 2006, we plan to confirm our teams for the upcoming season, take an inventory and order supplies as needed.  We will also conduct an on stream training session for new Streamkeepers and as a refresher for our veteran stream monitors. 
 
On our agenda for 2026 is to continue our chemical monitoring efforts on our nine "metro" streams including Belle Creek, Brown's Creek, Eagle Creek, Hay Creek, Ike's/ Mall of America Creek, Little Cannon River, South Branch Vermillion, South Branch Whitewater, and Trout Brook, We may be asked to conduct a macro invertebrate study on some area streams such as South Creek or Little Rock Creek, probably in August or September.  Another focus is to better coordinate our activities with other agencies so that our monitoring efforts help fill in gaps in the data collections.
 
More information about our 2026 Streamkeeper monitoring season will follow in upcoming newsletters.
 
At a recent online meeting sponsored by TU about the Clean Water Act, we were updated about some recent attacks on clean water. 

The TCTU Board has proposed some changes to our chapter bylaws that will be voted on at our Annual Meeting on January 26, 2026.  These changes are related to the composition of the nominations committee, and the appointment of directors.
To download the full text of the proposed revisions and/or a copy of our existing bylaws, please see below.

It is never too early to introduce children to the outdoors and conservation.  The children’s book “Stories of Grandma Trout: Tell me a Story Grandma” describes the historic struggle for survival of native brook trout in the Driftless region in the face of beaver trapping, logging, agriculture, overfishing, and non-native species told as an oral history by a grandmother trout to her fingerling granddaughter.  Set on Wisconsin’s Lowery Creek, the pair of trout are observed by two children fishing with their grandfather, who explains projects to improve trout habitat.  “Stories of Grandma Trout” was written by Trout Unlimited member Bill Lamberson and illustrated by Krystal Welter, wife of Driftless legend Duke Welter, and will be available from Green Writers Press summer 2026. Author royalties will be donated to Trout Unlimited. 
Distribution of the books to second grade classrooms in the Driftless region is the objective of an Embrace-a-Stream grant by the Mid-Missouri chapter of TU in partnership with Driftless region chapters.  Though the book project was deemed meritorious and received partial funding, a financial shortfall in the EAS program this year left us well short of our goal of distributing two books to each of 300 classrooms in the region.  With several other EAS projects facing similar shortfalls, Trout Unlimited has developed the “Give Where You Fish” program, which allows donors to target contributions to a specific EAS project from during a short window from December 1-7, 2025 (https://go.tulocalevents.org/easchallenge25/t/midmissouri).  Each $20 donation to “Stories of Grandma Trout” will provide two books, one for a teacher and one for the classroom, plus access to education materials on native brook trout, aquatic insects, aquatic mammals, and geology of the Driftless, designed to accompany topics addressed in this children’s story.
In addition, each donation will enter the donor into a drawing for an Abel TR native trout fly reel valued at $1,075. Help us educate the next generation about trout conservation: donate December 1-7 in support of this Mid-Missouri Chapter EAS project!

Thanks to all those who attended our chapter gathering at the Gnome Craft Pub and special thanks to Eagle Scout candidate Skyler Bahr and Wisconsin DNR researcher Matt Mitro for a couple of great presentations.  You can find pdf versions of Skyler's presentation on "Adopt a Drain" and Matt's presentation on "Beaver Impacts on Midwestern Trout Streams" below.  If you'd like to watch a video of Matt's presentation, you can find it on our YouTube channel here.  Don't forget to like and subscribe!

Thanks to photographer Rich Femling!

Welcome to November!  Tis the season of spawning trout and REDDS, gales and gusty winds, cooler temperatures, icing of lakes, bird migrations, and lots of leaves.  
We extend a thank you to our 37 Streamkeeper volunteers for their efforts during this past monitoring season!  We had a record total of 119 chemical water readings during the season on nine streams.  The streams were:  Belle, Brown, Eagle, Hay, Ike’s/ MOA, Little Cannon, South Branch Vermillion, South Branch Whitewater, and Trout Brook Creek.  We also conducted "Repeater" Macro invertebrate testing on some sites on the South Branch of the Whitewater River last spring.
Our stream water temperatures are cooling down, water levels are dropping, and spawning Redds are beginning to be seen.  During this time of year, I also enjoy watching the videos and pictures from the North Shore.  The waves are both beautiful, awe inspiring, and treacherous.  

Visitors to this year's Oktoberfish Silent Auction may have noticed the large number of bamboo rods available.  Six of these rods, plus two graphite rods, are from the John Bush Collection.  John has been a passionate fly angler and conservationist for many decades.  He, his brother, and a group of their friends from across the Midwest were aficionados of fine bamboo rods, and got together every year to fish them.  With the inevitable passage of time, their rods wound up in John's possession.  John recently moved into an assisted living facility in Cedar Rapids, and was looking for a home for these rods.  Hopefully a home where they would be fished frequently, and could contribute to cold water conservation.  John's daughter Kendra got in touch with TCTU Chapter Member Paul Algren, who organized for them to be donated to TCTU.  Thank you, John, Kendra and Paul!
Bid generously, and, if you are the lucky winner of one or more of these special rods, tight lines!

by Jim Sauter
Greetings from TCTU Streamkeepers.  Welcome to October.
 
"Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with people who are doing something you don't believe is right."  Jane Goodall, English Primatologist and Anthropologist, April 3, 1934- October 1, 2025
 
Let the dialogue continue as we strive to make a difference preserving our cold water resources and fisheries.  
The TCTU Streamkeepers are winding down our season as we monitor streams until the end of October.  Once the temperatures start creeping below 0 degrees C, the accuracy of some of our tests diminish.  We continue taking water temperatures, salt tests, and water clarity testing, but this is done on a much more random basis through late fall, winter, and early spring months.  Our "official" 2026 monitoring season will start up again next April.
Our Streamkeepers are ending the season with a "SPLASH."  We have already set a new single season record of 111 monitoring observations for 2025, and we still have the rest of October.  Last year we had a total of 75 observations, so we have already exceeded that number by 36 observations.  This data is added to the Izaak Walton League Clean Water Hub and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency databases.  This gives us  the bigger picture about what is happening in our streams in Minnesota and beyond.
To add a bit of excitement to our monitoring efforts as we conclude the 2025 season, we have launched the September/ October Splash.  During this time, we are challenging all Streamkeepers and TCTU members to get out there and make some observations.  You can help TCTU characterize the water quality conditions and identify stream disturbances throughout the 8 targeted TCTU streams and beyond.  

by Bob Luck
After a couple of years of drought, we finally had some big rain events this year in the Metro area.  No 50-year floods, but there were a couple of 3-4" gully washers that overflowed the banks, toppled trees and reconfigured the streams.  Whenever I meet somebody on a stream after one of these events, the talk turns to what we lost: a pool that nearly always had rising trout is now a featureless run; a narrow, boulder-filled run that was perfect for nymphing is now a wide, shallow riffle; a riffle that teemed with fish during the caddis hatch is now clogged with sand.  Objectively, a flood will typically create just as many good new fishing spots as it destroys, but we anglers don't see it that way.

Fact Sheet and photos for a 3-night stay at a cabin on fabulous Trout Run

Houston County is the best-kept secret in the Minnesota Driftless, but there is a new fly shop to help anglers figure it out.  Located in the town of Houston, right on the way to great streams such as East Beaver Creek, Winnebago Creek and Crooked Creek, Money Creek Outfitters offers flies, gear, guided fishing trips and kayak rentals.  Owner Josh Norlien is passionate and knowledgeable about his local streams.  Check it out!

by Yves Charron, TCTU President
I had a chance to fish the St. Croix last weekend with Evan Griggs and the Fishing For All team. What an enjoyable day on the river.   Below are some photos of the adventure

I was in Japan last week and when I flew back to Minneapolis on Saturday, frost warnings and rumors of snowflakes had been replaced by more typical mid-September weather, if you live in Alabama, that is.  87 degrees is ridiculous. I fell asleep at about 8:30 pm and woke up just past midnight yesterday with a nasty case of jet lag. I spent the next 9 hours drinking coffee, staring at the wall, watching Packers highlights on YouTube and being generally useless until I decided enough was enough and willed myself into my car to drive out to a trout stream.