By Jim Sauter
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The Dog Days of Summer have arrived.  Technically, the Dog Days of Summer are from July 3 to August 11 soon after the summer solstice.  Usually, these are the hottest and most unbearable days of the year.  But where did this term come from?    

According to Greek mythology, Sirius was the dog of the hunter Orion, and the ancient Romans placed the star in the constellation Canis Major (Latin for “Greater Dog”). The Romans thus referred to the sweltering period when the rising of the sun and Sirius converged as the “dies caniculares” or “days of the dog star.” By the 1500s, the English world began to call the same summertime point on the astronomical calendar as the “dog days.”

Due to a wobble in the Earth’s rotation that shifts the position of the stars in the night sky, the dates of the “dog days” now fall several weeks later on the calendar than they did thousands of years of ago.  Eventually in the distant future, the “sky dog days” will be during winter months.  (Source:  Christopher Klein, The History Channel)

The implications of this time of year for stream monitoring and fishing is that our air and stream temperatures are at their peaks.  Fishing early morning hours or at dusk is a good strategy.  On extremely hot days, it may be best to stay home and tie some hoppers.  Our highest water temperatures during this last month were recorded on Belle Creek and the Little Canon River at a toasty 68 degrees.  The lowest water temperatures that I noticed on a metro streams in July wer 59 degrees on Hay Creek and Eagle Creek.  I did also notice an amazing 51 degree reading on Trout Creek on July 24th in southern Wisconsin.​

T.U.N.E. Camp MN, a 5-day conservation and ecology camp for girls and boys age 11-16, wrapped up a very successful 2023 session in Lanesboro on July 17th. You can see more pictures of the event on the T.U.N.E. website.

As part of the programming, TCTU board member Paul Johnson taught the campers to tie their own flies. The next day, TCTU volunteers helped the kids catch fish with the flies they tied. Thank you to Paul, board member Yves Charron, and all the other TCTU members who volunteered for this event.

We'd also like to send an extra big thank you to T.U.N.E. Camp MN Superintendent Bruce Gockowski. Bruce organizes this wonderful event every year, and it's one we at TCTU are proud to support. To learn more about T.U.N.E. camp MN, visit their website.

by Bob Luck, TCTU President
Regular blog readers are aware that we have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to remove two dams on the Kinnickinnic River, an iconic trout stream that is the home water for much of our membership.  This year, the US Army Corps of Engineers is conducting a feasibility study on the removal of the dams and restoration of the river corridor.  This feasibility study is the first big step in developing a firm plan for the restoration of the river, and can bring up to $10 million in federal funding to the project. TCTU members have provided critical seed money to get this project going.  
The Corps will be hosting an open house on Tuesday August 15th from 6 pm to 8 pm at the River Falls Public Library.  Corps officials will provide a detailed overview of the feasibility study, and welcome the public to join and provide comment. River Falls City Officials will also be present.  The Corps' press release announcing the Open House is here.
This is a great opportunity for us to show our support for the restoration, provide comments, and get our questions answered.  I plan to attend, and I hope that you can join, too! A strong contingent of TU members at this meeting will demonstrate to the Corps and the City just how important this project is to us.
If you would like to read more about the Kinni Restoration project, please check out this page on our website.  If you have any questions about the upcoming open house, feel free to email me at bob.luck@twincitiestu.org.

You may have pointed your phone at the QR code on our brochure, or perhaps you just blundered into this post.  In any case, thanks for visiting!  Here is a quick guide to some key info.

MNTU has just completed a massive 8000 foot habitat improvement project on Hay Creek off 320th Avenue.  The prairie grass is growing in nicely, and the section will be ready to fish from August 1st.  Please stay off until then to give the grass a little time to grow!  For a map, click here. For a photo slideshow of the project, click "read more"

By Jim Sauter
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According to Paul Douglas’s weather report in the Star Tribune, the recent high temperature of 95 degrees in the metro area was the warmest day in 2023 so far.  We typically see an average of 14 days in the 90-degree range.  Already in 2023, we have tallied thirteen 90-degree days.  This is shaping up to be a very warm summer.  Let’s hope for more moderate temperatures and rain in the coming weeks and months!  Our stream water temperatures have stayed remarkably cool so far this summer in most streams.

In April of 2023, Minnesota Trout Unlimited joined ten other local, state, and national environmental groups to ask the EPA to use its emergency authority under the Safe Drinking Water Act to mandate a moratorium on new concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) in Minnesota’s karst region until nitrate levels decline. ​

​TCTU, in conjunction with Cabela's Rogers location, is offering free summer sessions to introduce people to the sport of fly fishing. Students will be exposed to four areas of fly fishing:

1. Bugs (the study of what invertebrates trout feed on)
2. Fly tying (each student will tie a fly that catches fish)
3. Fly cast instruction for beginners
4. Equipment utilized for fly fishing

Just over 100 years ago, Charles Adams and his son Lon were out fishing in northern Michigan. From what I have read, they were somewhat frustrated by not having the right flies to match a hatch. So they visited a local friend and fly tyer Leonard Halladay in Mayfield, Michigan. Mr. Halladay tried to come up with a pattern that would meet Mr. Adams’ needs and the Adams dry fly was created.

TCTU hosted its first Fishing Adventures trip June 23-25 in Preston, Minnesota’s Trout Capital. ​Twelve members joined the event, a few of whom are pictured below. Some missing individuals not in the picture got a head start on the water!

By Jim Sauter

​​In morse code, “SOS” is a signal sequence of three dits, three dots, and another three dits spelling “S-O-S”.  The expression “Save Our Ship” was used by sailors to signal for help for a vessel in distress.  Much in the same way, the Izaak Walton League has adopted the expression “SOS” to mean “Saving Our Streams”.

What percent of our streams are currently being monitored in the United States?  Best estimates are that about 30% are being monitored, and of those, over 50% are considered impaired in some way.  That means that over 70% of the streams in our country are not being actively monitored.  Many of those are also impaired with no data to determine trends and needs.  We have made substantial progress in cleaning up our streams and lakes, but there is still a lot of work to do!

Recently, several of our TCTU Streamkeepers attended the Save Our Stream Training in Winona that was sponsored by the Izaak Walton League.  The SOS water testing protocol contains many of the same chemical tests that we are currently doing plus the testing of macro invertebrates.  The advantage of bio monitoring is that it may show trends from pollution that do not show up with chemical testing.  Adding the bio testing component is something we may want to consider as we monitor the seven trout streams in our TCTU area.

​Every summer, Trout Unlimited conducts a Teen Summit and Leadership Conference for teen leaders for the purpose of exchanging ideas, learning about conservation and leadership, and shaping the continually evolving TU Teen program. This is an application/interview program with only 25 teens accepted from applicants across the country each year. 

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!

Greetings from your TCTU Streamkeepers.
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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.