Restoration tour attracts big crowd in Driftless Area

For a decade, hosting a bus tour of project sites has been is a popular annual tradition for the folks running Trout Unlimited’s Driftless Area Restoration Effort.  This year’s tour in Wisconsin in October drew nearly 75 people for a busy day of walking stream habitat projects in the Hudson-Menomonie areas of the Northern Driftless Area.  The group…

No shame

A couple weeks ago a buddy posted on social media a picture of himself holding a large brown trout with a brief caption: “No shame.” No additional information was necessary.  The other prop in the photo, the one in addition to the gorgeous 22-inch brown, was a spinning rod. The fish hit a large Rapala,…

Fitting it all in before it snows

Fall means trying to do a little bit of everything before the snow flies: the last mountain bike rides on dirt, climbing peaks to glass for elk, leaf peeping before they turn brown and litter the ground and of course, the last warm days of fishing. I celebrate this time of year and find great joy and happiness exploring…

Road-stream crossing training draws a crowd in Wisconsin

By Chris Collier Following up on our road-stream crossing (RSX) tour last May, Trout Unlimited and our partners recently organized and hosted a two-day RSX Technical Workshop in Crandon, Wisc. The workshop was organized to teach tribes, town and county governments, road managers, and conservation professionals why existing RSX practices are harming fish populations by…

TU spearheads growing partnership for brook trout conservation in MD

By Seth Moessinger On Sunday October 13, five neighboring chapters of Trout Unlimited joined forces to help restore important riparian habitat along Crabtree Creek within Western Maryland’s Savage River watershed.  The watershed supports the largest population of native eastern brook trout in the state and is managed by the Maryland DNR as a zero-creel limit,…

Pipeline report documents repeated pollution events

In central Appalachia, installing natural gas pipelines often involves trenching through wild trout streams by the dozens. Inevitably, that leads to problems. Storms pelt construction sites, sending plumes of sediment into waters. Stream crossing procedures fail. Restoration is not completed. All this puts coldwater resources at risk. Several major new pipelines have been built in…

PA’s Unassessed Waters Initiative reaches milestone

By Rob Shane When TU partnered with the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission in 2011 to start surveying and protecting wild trout streams in the Commonwealth, we knew the mountain ahead of us would take years to climb. Pennsylvania has 86,000 miles of flowing water, and less than a quarter of those stream miles had…