The author with his fly-fishing instructor, Maddie. By Jeffrey Constantz The week before I started my internship with Trout Unlimited, I had the opportunity to learn fly fishing for the very first time. I had the honor of receiving guidance from a true master. Her name’s Maddie. She’s my girlfriend. I came of age bass
By Scott Willoughby In a landlocked rise of rock and ice, Thompson Divide flows like a vein of Colorado gold. Within its bounds lies a vast sweep of lustrous aspen groves and lush conifer forests surrounded by the iconic sentinel of Mount Sopris to the east, the towering Ragged Wilderness to the south and the
By Scott Willoughby Snow season has arrived in Colorado. For better or worse, this year it coincides with election season. It is, of course, for the better. Despite the grumblings of a few fair-weather fishermen uninterested in facing the cold, hard reality of an early winter, the sooner we can reestablish our snowpack on the
Editor’s note: This is the second in a two-part series. Read part one here. By Eric Booton While we didn’t beat the sun to the punch, we still rose early the next morning, thankful for being a literal step from the river and having 12 hours left in our adventure. I spotted our Danish friend,
By Toner Mitchell Your best arguments are the simplest ones. Water, including anything you dump into it, flows downhill. Katrina, Sandy, Harvey and Maria comprise a trend. California and the burning mountain west comprise a trend. God didn’t create all these species so we could destroy his good work. You are sincere, yet careful about
Beyond its confluence with Cow Creek near the village of San Ysidro, the Pecos River’s southward crawl is rarely supplemented by significant inputs other than random flash floods. Deriving its existence from how much snow falls on a mere six percent of its watershed, the Pecos flows most of its length through a desert, which is why I’ve always had difficulty believing that it’s the sixteenth longest river
The Tongass. For many, it conjures some far away and foreign place. For others, it’s a name that has never been heard before. Yet, for all Americans, at nearly 17-million acres in Southeast Alaska, the Tongass is our largest National Forest and a national treasure owned by every citizen
High in the headwaters of Back Creek in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia are several small streams that only run after it rains. Those “ephemeral” tributaries to Back Creek, a wild brook trout stream that also holds browns and rainbows, intersect with the proposed 600-mile route of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, a project that
A TU member considers the delay of California’s Trout Opener along the Eastern Sierra and how anglers can help make sure angling regulations reflect scientific data.
Facebook among contributors to help secure enough water to support fish and recreation in one of the state’s most popular rivers June 30, 2020 Contacts: Jordan Nielson, Trout Unlimited, Jordan.nielson@tu.org – 801-850-1221 Michael Mills, Central Utah Water Conservancy District, mikem@cuwcd.com – 801-226-7132 Mike Slater, Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, michaelslater@utah.gov – 801-367-5941 Melanie Roe, Facebook, melanieroe@fb.com Mark Holden, Utah Reclamation Mitigation and
Just like that it was time to say goodbye to our friends. We had finished Montana and completed 991 miles of the trail.
I had heard about him from a friend who knew of his amazing skills as an equipment operator and used to tell me that, “Brett can clean your teeth with an excavator.”
Across the country, regional collaborations called “fish habitat partnerships” bring sometimes non-traditional partners together like sport and commercial fishing or business and government stakeholders to ensure vibrant fish habitat and communities. The idea sounds simple enough, but don’t underestimate their big effect. Together, the players fund and conduct science, restoration, protection, and education projects that are changing communities for the better. In Alaska, Trout Unlimited
By Mark Taylor During her hundreds of days wearing an electrofishing backpack in Pennsylvania, Kathleen Lavelle has searched for trout in just about every kind of stream, from tiny trickles to plunging, boisterous mountain rivers. But on a day in August 2019, she experienced something new. Lavelle and her crew were shocking fish in a road.
Wednesday afternoon, a day that America won’t soon forget, I was on a phone call just across the river in Trout Unlimited’s Arlington, Va., headquarters. A group of us at TU were talking about recovering Snake River salmon populations in the Pacific Northwest when my phone began blaring with a message from the mayor of Washington, D.C. In response to the attacks on the Capitol, she was ordering a city-wide curfew in three hours. TU staff and volunteers regularly go
A few days ago, the people of Wareham, Massachusetts delivered a victory for conservation. They voted overwhelmingly against the wishes of their Town Administrator, and four of their five selectmen, and denied a 775-acre development in the headwaters of Red Brook
The bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, just passed by the U.S. Senate, would deliver a major shot in the arm to trout and salmon conservation efforts across the country. This bill would rebuild, improve and restore America’s infrastructure through a variety of programs, many of which directly support TU’s water, restoration, forest health and mine remediation efforts.
Beneath the slack water, it’s all still there. Somewhere beneath the water and the silt, rapids lay waiting to re-emerge.
Having finished the online NYT crossword over morning coffee, retweeting some delicious burns on climate deniers, checking Facebook and Instagram, liking a picture of a steelhead, and prioritizing work emails before a day of zoom calls, he/she remarked, “Kids these days are hopelessly addicted to their devices,” as though the Peleton screen was an actual
Standing atop a newly installed bridge over Wolf Creek, deep in Tennessee’s Cherokee National Forest, Brett Yaw and Sally Petre were both smiling proudly.
