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Keeping a fish factory intact
Caption: Lynn Finley alongside the Encampment By Chris Wood I met Lynn Finley last week when Beth and Bruce White hosted a fundraiser for Trout Unlimited’s North Platte restoration work. Lynn is a small, fire-cracker of a woman who runs a lodge in Riverside, Wyo. We were sitting in her kitchen overlooking the Encampment River,…
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Living with the new normal
By Chris Wood Take an undersized culvert and add eight inches of rain in a few hours and you have the makings of a major problem for the creek and the adjacent road into “the holler”—the name of our place in West Virginia. A neighbor called me. “Chris, your road. It’s just gone.” The irony…
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Yes on I-186
By Chris Wood “I-185 and I-186 have qualified for the ballot.” With that inauspicious tweet, Montana’s Secretary of State Corey Stapleton confirmed two state-wide ballot initiatives this November in Montana. One is of huge import to people who care about clean water, trout, and trout fishing in Montana. I-186 would require Montana to deny permits…
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Don’t fall in love with a walleye fly
By Chris Wood Do not fall in love with a walleye fly--at least not in Ontario because here there be monsters. Northern pike, with scores of needle-sharp teeth are a toothy circumpolar fish that occupy habitat from Siberia to Alaska to Wisconsin, and in Canada share much of the range of walleye. A pike’s teeth…
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Dam Removal: Not a passing fancy
By Chris Wood Last week, I saw a video celebrating the removal of the Tack Factory Dam on Third Herring Brook in Massachusetts. Like all dam removals, it involved many partners especially the North and South Rivers Watershed Association, local TU chapters, the MA/RI Council, NOAA, and Steve Hurley of the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries…
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Thanks Joe
By Chris Wood “I was the first person Charles Gauvin hired at Trout Unlimited when he became CEO in 1992. He wanted to hire Steve Moyer, but Steve and Michelle just had their first child, and Steve thought the organization’s finances were too unstable. At the time Trout Unlimited had a budget of $2 million…
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Where skill, joy and service unite
By Chris Wood After I graduated college, my older brother, John, introduced me to a friend who was a Jesuit priest. At the time, I was a somewhat aimless bartender, ice cream maker and assistant high school football coach. One night after dinner and drinks, Father Donald asked me three questions: “Chris, what do you…
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