“Thank you No. 3. See you next time,” I whispered to the warm cabin as I closed the door of one of my favorite public-use cabins in Southcentral Alaska and turned to soak in the view from the deck with my wife and two dogs. It’s my trusty routine to thank the public resource that…
With snowcapped alpine tundra, 19 fishable lakes, and over 550,000 stunning acres of picturesque lands, Vermejo is the jewel of northern New Mexico. Its diverse landscape is home to a wide variety of wildlife including elk, bison, black bears, and mountain lions. Whether riding horseback through open fields, exploring turn-of-the-century charcoal kilns, or fly fishing for Rio…
Dams will forever change a river.
Sometimes I sit and wonder what certain rivers must have been like prior to a dam’s construction. That typically brings about more questions than answers. What was the river like years before? Were there bigger rapids? What was the fishing like? What did the native cultures lose when we buried a canyon under water?
Genomics offers a whole new world for understanding the evolution and conservation needs of trout and salmon. The massive amount of information afforded by modern sequencing techniques provide a more comprehensive view of population relationships and histories, which can be used for effective conservation planning. We can also learn how fish are adapting to their…
Pop quiz: OK, grab a map and point to Altmar, N.Y. That’s what I thought. I couldn’t do it either. But people who know fishing in upstate New York can do it in (forgive me) a New York minute. The Salmon River in Altmar is one of the greatest salmon and steelhead fishing destinations in…
The tones went off at about 2:30 a.m., and I rolled out of my bunk at the fire station, rubbing sleep from my eyes. I stepped into my bunker gear and slid my arms into the sleeves of my coat like an automaton. The dispatcher’s voice was calm and measured despite her dire message: “Engine…
Editor’s note: A variation of this piece first appeared in Hatch Magazine. Preparedness was never my thing. There’s a reason I made it to Webelo, but didn’t matriculate farther through the Boy Scout system. You can only show up at the den meeting without your little scarf slider so many times before it sinks in.…
The sun sets over Whitewater Lake in northwest Ontario. I’m at Striker’s Point Lodge, part of the the Wilderness North Lodge system in Ontario. We arrived after a 90-minute float-plane ride from Thunder Bay this afternoon, and, after getting our gear all unpacked and a quick dinner, we hit Whitewater Lake in search of some…
The author’s son getting a rowing lesson on Alaska’s Skilak Lake. Photo by Nelli Williams. By Nelli Williams Rivers bring people together. Some of my fondest friend-filled memories are on the river. Where we’ve laughed til our cheeks hurt—even years later— over the chaos in the boat when that first fish hit; or enjoyed a…
by Makenzie O’Connor A core component of Trout Unlimited’s mission is building a broad community of river-stewards to help implement and sustain our coldwater conservation work. A primary focus of this effort involves youth outreach and education. Trout Unlimited’s California Program and our California Council and chapters support this initiative by hosting youth engagement programs…
Contacts: Arlington, VA – The U.S. Department of Interior announced today that Deputy Secretary Tommy Beaudreau is stepping down at the end of the month after a combined 10 years at the agency, including the last two as deputy secretary, where he oversaw initiatives including protecting over 13 million acres of public land in Alaska,…
“She had crawled half-way over a log that much larger than she was when she spotted a Bonnie in a small pool on the other side of the log,” he recalled. “Not wanting to scare it away, she laid down on the log and pushed her rod slowly in front of her. Before she could get the fly where she really wanted it, another trout rose and took it.”
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE July 30, 2021Contact: Steve Moyer, Vice President for Government Affairs, Trout Unlimited smoyer@tu.org; (571) 274-0593 Sweeping infrastructure legislation introduced, headed for consideration on Senate floor New bill includes many provisions that will help coldwater conservation, but omits critical provisions championed by Trout Unlimited, including failure to support Rep. Simpson’s Snake River salmon…
Both anglers and trout find less stress upstream
Eric Booton with a nice early season rainbow trout from the Kenai River watershed. By Austin Williams I had barely stripped the line off my reel to make my first cast when I could feel my phone vibrating from the front pocket of my waders. Rats. Normally, I’d have let the call go, or not…
Trout Unlimited Youth Essay Contest Winner FIRST PLACE Campbelle Redding, Reno, Nevada, 11th Grade I started fishing when I was 4-years-old. My dad took me on my first quest to Cascade Lake in Yellowstone National Park. Traipsing across the stiff banks in my little purple waders, waiting for the freezing winds and torrential downpour to…
One of several BDAs (beaver dam analogues) recently installed in Squaw Creek to improve floodplain connectivity, among many other habitat benefits. By Tom Kloehn Trout Unlimited believes that conservation work begins with people. This belief was affirmed again when over 75 volunteers gathered recently to renew one of the Lake Tahoe region’s most popular places—Squaw…
The iconic Sundial Bridge, spanning the Lower Sacramento River in downtown Redding, California before and during the Carr Fire. By Sam Davidson California is burning. There are 17 wildfires charring the Golden State, at present. The biggest and gnarliest (of 2018, anyway) is the Carr Fire, which has torched more than 100,000 acres, mostly of…
When I was a kid, I had this recurring nightmare. I was probably around 7 or 8 at the time. In it, I would be walking down a dirt road with my dad and in the road were a series of big, muddy puddles, the kind you get after a long spring rain. As we…
I recently read an essay where a priest on a mission to Guatemala discovered that artists from the village painted museum-quality artwork on the inside walls of a bell-tower—a place where only pigeons would see them. The story reminded me of Trout Unlimited’s work—behind the scenes, often unnoticed, complicated, hard, and, ultimately, beautiful. What a year. We reckoned with racial injustice as a nation, and looked inward to the fact that we need to become…
