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A new edition is out from our friends in SE MN and Iowa, including everything new about Habitat, Conservation, Advocacy, and, of course, a fishing report! 
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Greetings from your TCTU stream-keepers, and welcome to the spring 2023 season. We look forward to expanding our “targeted” streams and will be monitoring these streams in 2023: Belle Creek, Eagle Creek, Hay Creek 320th St, Hay Creek 325th St., Little Cannon, Mall of America Creek, South Branch Vermillion, and Trout Brook. In addition, we have several “general” Streamkeepers monitoring other streams on a more random and spontaneous manner. In the coming months, we hope to give you updates on stream conditions in the TCTU area and beyond.
The Minnesota State Council of Trout Unlimited, of which TCTU is a member, has started implementing an ambitious strategic plan through 2025. You can find a copy of it here.
If you missed our chapter meeting, or want to see it again, check out Matt Sment's presentation on YouTube here. You can also download a copy of his presentation.
The April Edition is here from our friends in SE MN and NE IA.
by Bob Luck
The Little Cannon River in the Sogn Valley southwest of Cannon Falls occupies a special place in my heart. A friend has a farm on the river, and he lets me fish it if I promise to lock the gate behind me and release any trout I catch. It was there, on a spring day two years ago, that I caught my first and only 20” trout in Minnesota. I was retrieving a black woolly bugger through a tongue of current, saw a flash, kept retrieving and the fish smacked it. The fight was a bit anticlimactic—the fish made one spectacular jump and then sort of gave up, but it was a beautiful wild brown, with shoulders like a linebacker. I was thrilled to hear that the Trust for Public Land (TPL), using funds from the Outdoor Heritage Fund, purchased 77 acres along the Little Cannon upstream from my friend’s farm, and turned it over to the Minnesota DNR as the Little Cannon Aquatic Management Area. A new edition is out from our friends in SE MN and Iowa, including articles on Aquatic Insects, Habitat Improvement, and, of course, a fishing report!
Melissa Wagner of the MN DNR gave a great talk at our chapter meeting last night. If you missed it, you can catch a recording on our YouTube Channel. Don't forget to subscribe to the channel!
by David Lundeen
Three years of consistent low water has brought about challenging steelhead conditions for all anglers. For me, old stand-by tactics and spots have not produced as well as in years past. However, adapting trout Euro-Nymphing tactics for steelhead has proven to be a valuable and effective tactic to catch steelhead in these new normal conditions. While it might seem an exotic and difficult approach, it is highly accessible and affordable to anglers of all skill levels. To be clear, when I refer to Euro-Nymphing I am referring to the term and tactics as conventionally understood in the standard trout world. This means long rods, thin running line, long monofilament leaders and short drifts. Furthermore, I am not referring to the Chuck ‘N’ Duck style of steelhead fishing, though it is very effective and similar to Euro-Nymphing in that it is basically a tight-line approach. For the intent of this article I will refer only to the former. The remainder of this article will cover the principles of Euro-Nymphing as they apply to Great Lakes Steelhead. Greetings from your TCTU Streamkeepers.
Our TCTU efforts in stream monitoring are part of a much larger “crowdsourcing” effort in the driftless area. According to Dan Dauwalter from Trout Unlimited, we now have over 1,060 observations made using the WiseH2O mobile app in and around the Driftless Area. Below you will find the recent ‘2022 Activities Report’ that outlines the activity around the program through 2022. by Bob Luck
Tuesday, February 28 will be a day that changes the course of the Kinnickinnic River. I am not talking about a flood, thank goodness! The River Falls City Council will meet with the US Army Corps of Engineers to sign a contract for a feasibility study that could unlock up to $10 million in federal funding to remove the two dams in River Falls and restore the river corridor to a free flowing trout stream. Miss last night's chapter meeting? Want to see it again? Want to see Kasey's presentation materials? You have options! To see the video on our YouTube channel, click here. Kasey will also be delivering her presentation at the online Driftless Area Stream Restoration Symposium on Tuesday March 7th at 12:45 pm. For registration and details, click here. To download copies of Kasey's slides, the Rush Creel Survey or the 2022 Western Wisconsin Electroshocking summary, click the links below.
Greetings from your TCTU Streamkeepers. We are looking forward to continuing our stream monitoring efforts, and this will be our third year working with the WISEH2O app.
We are beginning to gear up for the 2023 stream monitoring season that begins in April and concludes in October. With moderate winter temperatures and almost record snowfall so far this winter, this should bode well for our area streams! TU's National Magazine featured an article on the Kinni in its Summer 2022 Edition. In case you missed it, you can download and read it here.
This just crossed our desk. If you are interested or know a college-bound senior who may be, please apply!
Randy Stevens was a professional fishing guide and owned River Rat Guide Service. He loved to fish walleye tournaments, hunt water fowl and train dogs to hunt. He loved the river life and the people he met that lived it with him. Randy passed away December 17th, 2020. As a family we decided to have a tournament to honor “RRR” and do an annual silent auction in his name and start a memorial scholarship in his name. Thanks to everybody who showed up in-person and on Zoom to approve our bylaws, elect directors, and learn about Trout in the Classroom from Amber Taylor. If you missed the meeting, or would like to take another look at Amber's presentation, you can download it by clicking on the link below. If you'd like to see the segment of "Minnesota Bound" featuring Trout in the Classrom on YouTube, click here.
A new edition is out from our friends in the Southeast, including great articles on Trout in the Classroom, Nitrate Pollution, and how to plan a fishing trip. If you are interested in fishing or volunteering in Southeast Minnesota, this is required reading!
The Twin Cities Chapter of Trout Unlimited (TCTU) is committed to increasing youth involvement in cold water conservation. That is why we are excited about the TU Teen Summit, and we are offering a $450 scholarship to defray the costs.
The TU Teen Summit recruits young leaders (8th to 11th Grades) that are committed to conservation and have demonstrated leadership in their schools and communities. If you’re a teen (in 8th to 11th Grades) and interested in learning how to become a TU Youth leader in your community, build team and leadership skills, restore habitat on a service project, explore career paths in the outdoors and conservation, and – oh yeah! – FISH, then the Teen Summit is the place for you. Read all the latest news from our friends in the Southeast, including events, chapter meeting summaries, and winter fishing tips.
by Bob Luck
With a path toward dam removal and restoration becoming clear, 2022 will likely go down as one of the most important years in the history of the Kinnickinnic River since the Ice Age! The Kinnickinnic is an iconic river, boasting more than 20 miles of Class I trout water within an hour's drive of a metropolitan area that bustles with over 3 million people. And it is the only Exceptional Resource Water in the State of Wisconsin to flow through a city of over 10,000. The Kinni is home water for many TCTU members, including me.
The November Hotline from our friends in the Hiawatha and WinCres chapters is here, and once again it has some great reading. I particularly enjoyed reading about the extended fishing season in towns and state parks, and the profile of habitat champion Paul Krolak.
In case you missed our chapter meeting (or if you want to see it again), you can find a video of John van Vliet's presentation on our YouTube channel here. Don't forget to subscribe!
During the meeting, John showed another video that he and his partner Cathy created. You can find that here. John has also shared his presentation materials as a PDF. Click here to download the presentation. Greetings from TCTU Streamkeepers.
As we approach the winter season with some occasional swaths of snow and freezing temperatures, our Streamkeeper group is wrapping up our monitoring activities until next spring. This year we expanded our monitoring efforts from three to six streams. We doubled the number of volunteers that are monitoring streams in these targeted areas, and we have a nice contingent of general Streamkeepers that are monitoring some other streams. by Steve Kaukola, Habitat Committee Chair
TCTU volunteers accomplished a phenomenal amount of work in the few years up to the end of 2019. There was major brush clearing along the South Branch of the Vermillion River, as well as on Hay Creek south of Red Wing. The COVID pandemic stopped everything in early 2020 as DNR policies prohibited organized activities on its Aquatic Management Areas (AMAs) for the next 18 months. As TCTU Board elections brought in several new members in January 2020, I was appointed as the new Habitat Restoration Coordinator. The former coordinator, Tony Nelson, has still been active assisting in this area. |
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May 2023
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