Voices from the River: Gages

Fishing for steelhead at the mouth of the Carmel River in the 1960s. By Sam Davidson For most of the past year we have been living next to a river. This has changed the way I think about streams, and fishing. Every angler knows that rivers are dynamic (where they are not dammed, anyway). That…

Voices from the River: Celebrating Texas trout

As I sit here in Idaho Falls watching two feet of snow melt into a slushy pond at the foot of my driveway, my buddy Kirk Deeter is likely stringing up a 5-weight with members of one of my favorite TU chapters in the country and preparing to chase some fat, tailwater trout. In Texas.…

Deer Creek Post-Fire Restoration Gets Blaine County Support

The Blaine County Commission has provided $465,000 from its Land, Water, and Wildlife Fund to assist with restoration of the Deer Creek drainage. About 70 percent of the drainage was ravaged by a lightning-sparked fire in August 2013. Severe rains immediately after the fire triggered debris flows and mudslides, clogging Deer Creek with sediment, shifting…

Short casts: Fish ladders don’t work, public lands support in CO, whirling disease in the Bow

John Day Dam on the Columbia River. A new Yale University study provides some daunting news for water and dam managers across the country: fish ladders aren’t the “fix-it” solution to fish migration over irrigation or hydroelectric dams. The study, which took place on three East Coast rivers—the Connecticut, the Susquehanna and the Merrimack—showed that…

Reconnecting trout and people in West Virginia

Replacing an undersized culvert with this bridge not only reduced flooding risks on a small tributary to the Capacon River in West Virginia, it reconnected 4.5 miles of native brook trout habitat. (Photo: Abby McQueen, TU stream restoration specialist) By Brooke Andrew The Trout Unlimited field staff in West Virginia are firm believers in our…

Big, wild, and coming back: California’s Eel River

Soda Creek, tributary to the upper Eel River. Large wood structure project directed by TU’s North Coast Coho Project. The Eel River is the beating heart of California’s “Lost Coast,” a swath of rugged country famous for its steelhead a nd salmon streams. Historically, the Eel was the third largest producer of salmon and steelhead…