The National Fish Habitat Partnership has announced its latest round of funding, a list of 95 projects in 24 states, putting nearly $40 million toward a vast and diverse array of work around the country.
In May of 2024, the Oak Brook Trout Unlimited chapter traveled to the Driftless Area for their annual fishing visit. But in addition to the chapter’s usual fishing and stewarding their section of highway near Viroqua, magnanimous chapter member Dave Carlson also offered to give TUDARE a preview of the eDNA sampling methods the chapter has…
Without willing, conservation-minded landowners, very few stream restoration projects would happen in the Driftless Area. Over 90% of Driftless trout streams flow through private land, so building relationships and educating landowners about the benefits of stream restoration are critical first steps in assuring that stream restoration work will continue. With this reality in mind,…
Save the Date: Tuesday, October 16, for the 2018 Driftless Projects Tour. We’ll spend a lovely autumn day on a comfortable charter bus touring a major multiyear Driftless Watershed project and a smaller stream with some unique characteristics. If you’ve fished the last day of trout season October 15 (except in Iowa), you can ease…
One major strength of TU is we provide expertise that spans jurisdictional boundaries. Working with a host of collaborators from various fields, we can tackle issues across broad – even global – geographies and multiple disciplines for comprehensive synthesis of current and emerging science. TU scientists contributed to publications like Diversity and Status of Trouts and…
Since it was conceived in 2004, TUDARE has worked to ramp up restoration work across the unglaciated, or “Driftless” area of the upper Mississippi River Basin. This 24,000-square-mile area lies in southeastern Minnesota, northeast Iowa, northwest Illinois and western and southwestern Wisconsin. It offers over 6,000 miles of cold spring creeks in 600 watersheds, one…
There’s “Stihl” time for Driftless Area chapters to apply for a grant to purchase equipment from the forest and landscape equipment company. Stihl continues to be a great partner for TU’s work in the Driftless area, strengthening a collaboration that started several years ago. Under the partnership agreement, Stihl representatives from the Midwest region gather…
Trout Unlimited’s Driftless Area Restoration Effort is an incredible conservation success story, and one that is going as strong as ever. Highlights of the program are beautifully and succinctly captured in a new 16-page brochure produced by the program’s leaders. The brochure isn’t just a retrospective of the impact of the 15-year effort, but also…
May and June are great months for fishing caddis patterns in the driftless. This year, I noticed many fish receptive to caddis patterns stationed in shallow, fast water in broad daylight. Here are a few suggestions that might help you catch more trout on caddis patterns. I am not a big fan of floating caddis…
Several major restoration projects are on tap for the coming field season in the Driftless Area, one of Trout Unlimited’s Priority Waters. Here are several of the biggest efforts on tap Nohr Chapter – Snow Bottom Stream Improvement Project – Wisconsin The Nohr Chapter was awarded a Department of Natural Resources Surface Water Grant to…
As partnership specialist for Trout Unlimited’s Driftless Area Restoration Effort (TU-DARE), Peter Jonas helps anglers, farmers, resource professionals, environmentalists, educators, students, and government officials work together to heal watersheds. Peter developed experience and expertise in recruiting partners, community building, public speaking and grant writing in his prior work as an ordained minister and as a…
Winter and early spring fishing can be remarkably good in the Driftless Area. However, flexibility is the name of the game in low temperatures. Generally, I favor the classic slow and deep approach. If I see no visible rises, I start out indicator fishing with a scud or a caddis on point and a Brassie…
By Duke Welter TU and partners continue to work together to improve trout streams — and to improve trout fishing — in the Driftless Area. Lessons learned along the way are being used to inform future efforts. Kiap-TU-Wish Trout Unlimited, Wisconsin DNR, NRCS and other TUDARE partners recently completed a project on the Trimbelle River…
By Kent Johnson, Carter and Sarah Borden and Dan Dauwalter Trout Unlimited has an army of volunteer anglers on the water every day. This makes the organization rife with potential to crowdsource data on streams and rivers to educate anglers and inform coldwater conservation. This is the reason Angler Science is emphasized in TU’s Strategic…
The fishing ain’t what it used to be. We’ve all heard that familiar lament, usually uttered by an angler trudging back to the parking lot after getting skunked. As conservationists, we know it’s too often true. The losses of trout and salmon fisheries relative to their historic distribution are well known to all of us. But this…
Coulee Region Trout Unlimited is 501 c3 non-profit all volunteer organization and chapter #278 of Trout Unlimited. CRTU began in 1974 and serves Crawford, Juneau, La Crosse, Monroe, Richland, and Vernon counties in Wisconsin’s Driftless Region.
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…
Participants walk along the site of recent restoration on Weister Creek as Project Manager Paul Hayes briefs them on the project. (Photo by Gillian Pomplun, Crawford County Independent.) One of the more notable projects in the Wisconsin part of Trout Unlimited’s Driftless Area Restoration Effort in recent years has been the Weister Creek project near…
