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by Bob Luck
“Sometimes I find it hard to pick a topic for my monthly TCTU column”, I told my wife Sahya. “But this time is easy. I am going to write about how my fishing rods got lost in Turkey.” “They didn’t get lost in Turkey”, she replied. “They got lost in Minneapolis”. She was right. I spend most of my year either fishing or traveling, but I rarely combine the two. I do my fishing from April to November, mostly in the Driftless Area with an occasional outing to the Mississippi, or the St. Croix, and a rare trip to the Rockies. I do my traveling from December through March. I leave my fishing rods at home and focus on culture, history, food and marriage maintenance. But last Fall, when Sahya told me she wanted to visit Turkey, I started plotting. Turkey has plenty of warm, sunny places along with great food, culture and a fascinating history, but it also has high mountains and all kinds of interesting subspecies of brown trout. I negotiated with Sahya to give me a few days off at the beginning of April, and tracked down a local fly fishing guide who was willing to take me on a fishing/camping excursion into the Taurus mountains just north of the Mediterranean city of Antalya. My guide, Tuncay, advised me to bring rods, waders and gear because fly fishing gear is expensive or unavailable in Turkey, and his supply is limited.
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QUOTE OF THE MONTH Kudos to TCTU member Chris O'Brien for his recent comments in the Minnesota Star Tribune Article about the Vermillion River. Source: Johnson, Cloe. "Health officials have new advice on what fish are safe to eat in Minnesota." Minnesota Star Tribune, 2 May 2026. “I think there’s a lot of families fishing [around the Vermillion River], and a lot of kids getting excited about keeping their trout that they catch,” O’Brien said. “It’s (i.e., changes in the fish consumption rules) definitely a loss in recreational opportunity for sure.” STREAMKEEPER NOTES We've already recorded our first chemical monitoring readings of the spring! Kudos to Rowe Winecoff and Keith Ketchmark for taking our first readings for 2026! The "spring flush" of nitrate pollution is coming soon. The spring flush of nitrate pollution is a seasonal surge in nitrogen concentration in waterways, peaking as springtime rains wash fertilizer and manure from agricultural fields into surface and groundwater before crops can absorb it. This phenomenon, worsened by climate-driven, high-intensity rain events, causes significant ecological damage, including algal blooms and fish kills, while also threatening drinking water with high nitrate levels that can cause health problems like blue baby syndrome. Every single data point we upload helps us build a clearer picture of stream health so we can strive for clean water for generations to come. If you want to learn more about chemical monitoring of streams, please join our event on April 18th. In my last fishing excursion to Wisconsin, I discovered a new fly. A friendly angler (who turned out to be TCTU member Gene Scheffler) called it the Chuck Caddis. Gene was very generous and gave me one in size 16 and another in size 18. The Chuck Caddis uses woodchuck hair. I'll have to give it a try and tie up a few! I just need to find some woodchuck hair.  The Chuck Thanks to all those who attended our chapter gathering last night, and special thanks to Melissa Wagner of the Lanesboro DNR office for her presentation on stocking. You can find a a link to the video of the presentation as well as a PDF copy below. by Jim Sauter
"The child in nature is an endangered species, and the health of children and the health of the Earth are inseparable." Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods Greetings from the TCTU Streamkeepers. Spring has arrived, and this is the time where I am switching modes from fly tying to stream monitoring and fishing. My contribution to the Laughing Trout Bug Bank this year was 50 pink squirrels. I have attached a photo and recipe/ instructions at the bottom of this article. Randy Lage, with the help of Chip Meyer and Craig Passow, organized and recruited some members of the Laughing Trout Fly Fishing Club to tie flies for various youth, veterans, and other organizations. The purpose is to promote fly fishing, warm water fishing, and fly tying. The Bug Bank is a sub-committee of Laughing Trout Fly Fishing Club and has provided outreach to various groups and organizations. The Laughing Trout Bug Bank continues to explore other groups and organizations that may benefit from these donations. The Laughing Trout club meets every Wednesday evening at the Wayzata American Legion at 6:00 pm. There are some very highly skilled fly tiers in this group, and they have even allowed me join, sit in, and learn a few things. All are welcome. There are other excellent fly tying opportunities in the Twin Cites metro area such as the St. Paul Fly Tiers & Fishing Club and at various fly fishing shops. The St. Paul Fly Tiers meet on Thursday nights at 7:30 pm at the VFW in North St. Paul. Our TCTU Streamkeeper group is gearing up for our 2026 monitoring season. by Bob Luck
It was 56 degrees and sunny when my plane from Tokyo touched down on Monday afternoon. “Perfect spring weather”, I thought as I got off at the Nicollet LRT station and walked back to the apartment I had last seen in January when I decamped to Asia for warmer weather and better food. Tuesday’s weather was less than perfect. Overcast, with a few snow flurries, a pesky wind from the Northwest, and a forecast high of 40. “Maybe this lousy weather will bring a good Blue-winged Olive hatch” I told myself as I got into my car and drove to my friend Mike Miller’s farm on the Lower Kinni. Mike was still down in Florida, but had told me I could go ahead and drive down his dirt road towards the river to avoid a long walk in. I hesitated briefly when I got to the hill overlooking the river, but the track looked good, so I drove to where the road ends a few hundred yards from the river. Nothing was hatching, so I worked my way upstream, tightlining a nymph with my Tenkara rod. After two hours of casting practice, I picked up five fish in a deep run that we call the Otter Hole. by Kevin Wier
2025 was another great year for the Foster the Outdoors mentorship program. We paired a total of 12 youth with volunteer mentors and three of the youth this year were young ladies. In the March edition of the MNTU newsletter we had the opportunity to highlight and thank some of the wonderful partners who make this mentorship program tick. Of course the real MVP’s of the program are the mentors themselves and we highlight some of their adventures in the article as well. You can see the full article here: https://mntu.org/newsletter/ At the risk of stating the obvious, we can’t run the program without mentors. On March 10, 2026 twelve Charter Members approved the formation of a Twin Cities-based Fly Fishing Guides Association. The goal of the Association is to elevate the sport through scientific literacy, conservation leadership, and exceptional client experience. If you'd like more information on the Association, please email John Edstrom or Carl Maijer.
Regular readers of our newsletter may recall that TCTU has adopted Neonic-treated seeds as its key advocacy issue for 2026. To learn more about these dangerous insecticides, and what we plan to do about them, please read the document below. If you would like to join our efforts, please click here to fill out a brief survey. Thanks to all those who attended our chapter gathering last night. Special thanks to our guest speakers including Randy Arnold, Kevin Wier, Zander Cummins and Kasey Yallaly. If you want to get to work with Randy on Habitat Projects in Wisconsin, email him: [email protected] If you want to get involved with Foster the Outdoors, email them: [email protected] If you want to attend Neonics Lobby Day at the Capitol, you can find details and registration here You can find a pdf version of the presentations below. If you'd like to watch a video of Kasey's presentation, you can find it on our YouTube channel here. Don't forget to like and subscribe. See you next month! by Yves Charron
Good day fellow TCTU members, Finally got some warm weather so we can all head outside and do some fishing. I had the chance to fish with some TCTU friends. Hope you were able to get out too and enjoy this warmer weather. Here is a 1-page primer on Neonics for hunters and anglers, prepared by the TCTU Neonics Advocacy Team by Jim Sauter If you are like me, you enjoy watching the birds almost as much as catching trout when wading our streams. According to Andrew Halberg in his "Stop the Thud" bird study at the U of M, one of the most susceptible birds for colliding into windows can often be seen by many of our streams- the Warbler. We should start seeing them reappear in Minnesota in April and May. Quote of the Month: "Approximately 365 million to over 1 billion birds are killed by colliding with windows in the United States every year... The total decrease in bird populations over the last 50 years is about 2.9 billion birds." His study also looks at ways to help mitigate this issue. Andrew Halberg, Ph.D. Candidate, U of M. Stop the Thud Study For more information about Andrew's study, click here. Our days are getting longer, and we seem to have passed the coldest days of the year. I have not yet ventured to any streams yet, but I'm hoping to get out there in the coming weeks as our air temperatures start hitting the 40 and even 50 degree mark. Catch and release season is open for trout in many Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa streams. This is also the time of year when we begin gearing up for the upcoming TCTU Streamkeeper season. STREAM MONITORING IN 2026 As we begin the 2026 stream monitoring season, this is a good opportunity for you to get involved. We have two categories of stream monitors. 1. Targeted Streamkeepers- TCTU has stream monitoring teams that are taking chemical tests on nine streams around the metro area. The TCTU streams include Belle Creek, Brown's Creek, Eagle Creek, Hay Creek, Ike's/ MOA Creek, Little Cannon River, South Branch Vermillion, South Branch Whitewater River, and Trout Brook. Our targeted teams for 2026 are complete. 2. General Streamkeepers. These are members that are randomly monitoring streams during the season at times and locations of their choosing. We invite and encourage any TCTU member to join our general streamkeeper group. The chemical monitoring season begins in April and concludes at the end of October. If you have an interest in becoming a General Streamkeeper in the upcoming season, please contact me at: [email protected] We plan on conducting on-stream training in April. Be sure to check the events page on our website in the coming month to sign up. More information will also be in the March newsletter. TCTU STREAMKEEPER TRAINING We will do on-stream water quality chemical training for new Streamkeepers, current Streamkeepers that need some refresher training, and anyone that has interest in learning more about taking chemical water tests. We will follow the Izaak Walton League Save Our Stream (i.e. SOS) protocol and learn about taking measurements including water temperature, clarity, nitrates, nitrites, pH, alkalinity, hardness, phosphate, and salt. We will also discuss the updated Google Form that we will use to record the data. Date: Saturday, April 18, 2026 Time: 10:00 am Location: TBD. An event link with the location will be available soon. If you want to see some of our monitoring results from prior years, you can create an account and log into the Clean Water Hub at: https://www.cleanwaterhub.org/account/login 1. Log in with email address and password 2. Scroll down and click “Search Sites” and enter TCTU 3. Scroll down and click “My Organizations" 4. Select either “Non Target Waters TCTU” or “TCTU-Target Streams” 5. Please note that we have two pages of streams for Targeted Streams 6. Click SOS Chemical to find our data from prior years. We also have the biological test results that we gathered at Eagle Creek and the Whitewater River on the Clean Water Hub. SALT WATCH, JANUARY 2026 Special thank you to Abby Hileman from the Izaak Walton League of America for her contributions as we recently completed the Salt Watch at the end of January. Results and a more detailed report from our partner organization, the Izaak Walton League, will be forthcoming in future newsletters. Source: Abby Hileman, Salt Watch Coordinator, Izaak Walton League of America "Did you know that one teaspoon of salt has the potential to permanently pollute five gallons of water? Once salt enters the environment, there is no feasible way to remove it. As it does not break down, salt continually builds up in our soils, groundwater, and surface waterways. Most water utilities also do not have the funding or infrastructure to remove salt from drinking water. Readings like Harold Swalik's (i.e., see results below) at the Mall of America stream are over the chloride threshold (230mg/L) of what the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) considers to be chronically toxic to freshwater aquatic life. These concentrations are expected to rise as increasing temperatures cause snowmelt and rainfall to wash even more salt into our streams, putting further strain on aquatic life. Monitoring our waterways and sharing results are both crucial steps to starting the conversation about smart salting practices, as we can always do better when it comes to balancing the scale on environmental protection and public safety." Thank you to all our Streamkeepers for your great work in helping to monitor our streams! SALT/ CHLORIDE READING 2026 OBSERVER: Harold Slawik OBSERVER NOTES: The habitat work from last summer on MOA Creek is progressing well. LOCATION: MOA/ IKE'S CREEK DATE: February 6, 2026 Chloride Reading: 283 mg/l, Better than usual but still very high Water temperature was 46.2 degrees C Chloride (Cl), mg/L readings
Streamkeeper Harold Slawik did an AI query about our chloride testing, and this is what he discovered: "I am using a Quantab brand chloride test strip kit provided by the Izaak Walton League of America to measure the chloride levels in a local stream. What chloride compounds will the test strip detect in addition to sodium chloride (salt)? AI Response: Great question — and the chemistry behind the Quantab strip is key to answering it. The strips work by reacting with chloride ions (Cl⁻) in solution. The strip is impregnated with silver dichromate (Ag₂Cr₂O₇). When dipped in water, chloride ions react with silver ions from the silver dichromate to precipitate insoluble silver chloride, turning the strip from brown to white. The length of the white region indicates chloride concentration. The critical point is that the strip detects the chloride ion itself, not any specific chloride compound. This means it will respond to the dissolved Cl⁻ ions released by any soluble chloride salt in the water, regardless of what cation (positive ion) is paired with it. Common chloride sources in streams that would be detected include:
That's all for now. Tight lines. Jim Sauter TCTU Streamkeeper Coordinator PHOTOS MOA/ IKE'S CREEK HABITAT WORK, May 12, 2025 Relocating Brook Trout During Habitat Work Photos by Jim Sauter by Bob Luck
Regular readers of this column may be aware that I am a snowbird, spending a couple of months each year in Asia where the weather is warmer and the food is better, unless you are a fan of green Jello hot dish garnished with tater tots. This year I thought I was pretty smart, getting out of town just ahead of a polar vortex that sent temperatures way below freezing and caused shelf ice to form on spring fed creeks. It didn’t last long; I understand that temps have been climbing into the 40s and even the 50s. I now get taunted just about every day by friends who are letting me know how much fun they are having on area streams while I am sweating in the tropics. There is no way I can hold a grudge against friends enjoying a day on the stream, but a 50-degree day in February is a guilty pleasure if there ever was one: more evidence of a changing climate that promises to bring more hot weather, more droughts and more intense summer rain events to put stress on our streams. I have heard often that “these are the good old days” in the Driftless Area. Due to less intensive farming, better agricultural practices and legislation such as stream buffer laws, fish populations have never been higher, and the fishing has never been better since European settlers first showed up with their wheat seeds and steel plows. That has been my experience, too. I catch more fish now than I did growing up in Madison the 1970s, or when I first moved to the Twin Cities in the late ‘80s, and when I look at the DNR maps of trout streams, there are more blue and green highlighted streams than there were twenty or thirty years ago. 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! Thanks to all those who attended our chapter gathering last night, and special thanks to Carrie Jennings and Lucas Rhoads for a couple of great presentations.
You can find pdf versions of the presentations below. If you'd like to watch a video of the presentations, you can find it on our YouTube channel here. Don't forget to like and subscribe! 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. |
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