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The Real Deal: Crystal Creek Lodge
Every spring, our friends at Orvis host their annual Orvis Guide Rendezvous. For the last eight years, they’ve been kind enough to invite me. And I love being there. One of the greatest parts of that event is the presentation of awards for outstanding guides, outfitters and lodges. But this year was particularly sweet. It…
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Thinking big, starting small
Herman Garcia (L) of CHEER and Matt Clifford, California Water Attorney for Trout Unlimited, at an off-stream storage project site along Little Arthur Creek. In 2006, the Pajaro River on California's central coast came out of obscurity to make national headline---for the wrong reason: it was named the most endangered river in America. Historically, the…
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The Krug Family Forest: A tribute to tributaries and small tracts
By Nick Sanchez and Jamie Vaughan Urban sprawl, development and agricultural pressures have deforested much of southern Michigan. In rapidly developing areas of southern Michigan, forest and farmland loss continues to this day. Luckily, family forest owners, like the Krug Family, are taking steps to protect their forests and the important waters that flow through…
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The Pecos is fishing great … for now
The lifeblood of the Village of Pecos, the Pecos River flows through public and private lands in a narrow canyon flanked by in aspen, Gambel oak, and mixed conifer. The Pecos boasts a fun salmon fly hatch in early summer, and I love how spooky the fish are in autumn, when elk bugles echo, the banks blaze with yellow cottonwoods, and the water resembles the air above, cold, clear and…
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Leave it to the beavers
Editor’s note: TU sent a handful of college students to the Pacific Northwest for this year’s TU Costa 5 Rivers Odyssey to study and fish in the Columbia River basin. With misty morning breaths, the Odyssey crew circled up at the entrance of Black Pine Lake in the mountains of Winthrop, Wash. Already dressed in our…
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The cannabis conundrum
This graphic of a tributary to the Eel River shows the intense marijuana cultivation typical of many drainages in California's Emerald Triangle. The large red circles indicate outdoor grows of more than 100 plants and the pot farms in this drainage alone require more than 15 million gallons of water per growing season. By Matt…
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Restore the core
The Rock Creek watershed It looks like an out-of-place slip-and-slide placed into a meadow alongside a tributary of Rock Creek. It is, in fact, a fish screen. Like so many western trout streams, Rock Creek and its tributaries are important sources of irrigation for farmers and ranchers. In the past, many irrigators would dam a…