You could say it all started with Ralph Sawyer. After a legendary canoe racing career, Ralph began building paddles and oars. In 1967, he established Sawyer Paddles and Oars in the small town of Rogue River, Ore. He fell in love with whitewater rafting and began producing whitewater oars. Sawyer oars were soon found in…
The room is full for the banquet. I first came across the Narragansett chapter of Trout Unlimited seven or eight years ago, when a few frustrated members contacted me and complained that the chapter was assisting the state in stocking over native fish in violation of TU policy. After a time, the chapter stopped, but…
The Russian River is one of the most famous steelhead fisheries in California. It is also one of the highest priority watersheds for Coho salmon recovery in the Golden State. For many years, TU has worked to support Coho recovery in the Russian River watershed. Our Redwood Empire Chapter has supported this effort through a…
Gary recalls talking to a road engineer more familiar with channelizing and straightening rivers in response to floods. As he looked over the work “his face fell from pink to grey, and he said, ‘We have been doing this wrong for 100 years.’”
Mabel Creek is in the Upper Youngs River, above 90-foot-tall Young River Falls, so the native coastal cutthroat trout populations above the falls persist largely undisturbed by decades of hatchery production focused on targeted anadromous fisheries downstream in Youngs Bay near Astoria. While located on private timber land, the Upper Youngs River area is open…
Renowned for their size, the Lewis and Clark River is still home to a remnant population of winter steelhead. But two perched and undersized culverts on private timber land blocked upstream and downstream passage for adult and juvenile native winter steelhead and coastal cutthroat trout to and from intact spawning habitat. One culvert was on…
Working with a private timber company, Trout Unlimited removed nine culverts which were barriers to passage for Necanicum River wild coho, steelhead, coastal cutthroat and lamprey. Starting at culvert highest in the watershed of the nine targeted for removal, TU removed fill and the culvert while recontouring stream banks to replicate pre-road conditions. From there…
