March Streamkeepers Report

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.  

STREAMKEEPER/SAVE OUR STREAM (SOS) CHEMICAL TESTING TRAINING EVENT
Date:  Saturday, April 26
Time:  10:00 am
Location:  Eagle Creek, 126th St. W.  Bridge Access, Savage, MN, 55378

Register Here

We will do in-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 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 Google Form that we use to record the data.

If you want to see some of our monitoring results from prior years, you can create an account and log in 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 on the Clean Water Hub.

RECENT READINGS

Eagle Creek
Streamkeeper Monitor:  Todd Christenson
Date:  Monday, 2/24/25
Time 3:30 pm
Air Temperature:  +50 degree
Water Temp:  50.7 degrees F,  10.4 degrees C 
Chloride:  2.1 Quantab units, 53 ppm, %NaCl= .009
Note:  2 consecutive 50 degree days
 


Mall of America/ Ike's Creek
Streamkeeper Monitor:  Harold Slawik
Date:  Tuesday, 2/25/2025
Time:  AM
Air Temperature:  +50 degrees F
Chloride:  6.1 Quantab units, 373 ppm, %NaCl= .059

Chloride (NaCl), mg/L Reading Scale
• excellent= 0-20 ppm
• good= 21-50 ppm
• fair= 51-250 ppm
• poor>250 ppm

During the first week of March, I will be joining three others on a trip to the Taneycomo River near Branson in search of rainbows.  I can't wait for the 60 degree temperatures!

That's all for now.  Tight lines.

Jim Sauter
TCTU Streamkeeper Coordinator