President’s Message:
Dear Mid-Missouri Trout Unlimited Members
MMTU had its second meeting after the Summer Break on October 4 at the Ficklin Shelter at Cosmo-Bethel Park as we did in the September Meeting.
We will be meeting there again on November 1. This will be the last meeting at Fickling in 2022. The address is 4500 Bethel Street Columbia. For more information about this venue and directions go to the following link: https://www.como.gov/contacts/j-w-ficklin-shelter/. Our meetings start with a social hour beginning at 6:00 PM, followed by a short business meeting and a presentation.
The December Holiday Party, the January meeting, and February meeting will be at Rock Quarry House. This venue is in Rock Quarry Park more information can be found at the following link: https://www.como.gov/contacts/rock-quarry-house-2/. The address is: 2002 Grindstone Pkwy, Columbia, MO 65201. The Holiday party is a pot luck, we will be providing details with the November newsletter, but significant others are invited and many attend.
The presentation in November will be by Chalen Jackson, on Tenkara fishing. Tenkara is a Japanese style of fly fishing. The Tenkara flies he showed me seemed to be tied backwards if you want to know why you should come to the meeting.
At this months meeting we had Matt Smith a committee member for Troop 134 in Ashland come to our meeting and request our assistance with showing about 7 of his Boy Scouts how to cast and hopefully catch fish. The expectations are high as about 3 years ago Matt’s son caught the fly fishing bug from Kent Campbell who picked a fly, showed him were to cast at our Bethel Lake Winter Fly Fishing event. We are looking for members to join us on Sunday November 6 at 10:00 am on the lakefront at Cosmo-Bethel lake. I will bring 10 rods, enough reals and hopefully enough flies from the chapter’s collection. We often set up on the lake the first Sunday after the trout stocking to encourage passers-by to try fly fishing.
After Matt finished his appeal we had a presentation from Sam Potter a guide from the Rolla area. His website is https://tightline.biz/. Sam had some great insights for us. There was a consensus on the proper number of fly rods to own (one more) and that back packs for fly fishing don’t make sense unless you are actually back packing and planning to camp. There were handouts and if you want the secret knowledge you should have been there (truth is I misplaced my copy and I’m still hoping to find it).
Finally after Sam’s presentation. Travis Figg gave us an update on the Fundraising Committee's plans.
We are going to have a sweepstakes. To get this started we are going to start small with a fly box with flies. We are asking members to donate flies, please bring them to the November meeting or contact Travis before the meeting for alternate delivery instruction. There is more information below from a subsequent meeting.
The Fundraising Committee had a meeting subsequent to the chapter meeting where they discussed the up-coming auction. These are Travis Figg’s notes from that meeting:
The fundraising committee met on 10/13/22 to iron out the remaining details of our chapter's 1st online sweepstakes.
Key points:
- Prize: Flies tied by members of Mid-Mo TU (# of flies TBD depending upon how many we can get tied up by the Nov. 1st chapter meeting)
- The sweepstakes will begin Nov. 7th and run for three weeks. The goal is to have the winner drawn and prize in the mail to them by December 1st at the latest
- We'll be promoting the sweepstakes through email, Facebook, and possibly other channels
- The box/container that the flies will be delivered in is still unknown and will depend upon how many/what type of flies we end up with.
We would like to remind any and all members who would like to donate flies for the sweepstakes to bring them to the November 1st meeting. This will allow us time to get pictures and descriptions of the flies on the sweepstakes page prior to its start date.
If you are bringing flies and get a chance, could you please include the following information (does not have to be anything fancy and can be on a handwritten piece of paper):
1. Your name
2. Pattern name/size/quantity that you are donating
3. Why you like the pattern (2-4 sentences is plenty)
Jeff Holzem and I had an opportunity to speak with Libby Glaser who is the Trout Unlimited Costa 5 Rivers Coordinator. Travis would have attended but this meeting was at the same time as the Fundraising Committee meeting. The subject was the Headwaters (Youth) Program which she Coordinates. This program includes the 5 Rivers program which is focused on engaging college students in cold water conservation. Libby is the only full time Trout Unlimited employee in Missouri. Jeff originated the contact to discuss how the National Leadership Council Climate Change Workgroup and Libby could interact to engage students. In the process we learned about the the MIZZOU Fly Fishing Club which is included in the 5 Rivers program. We will use this information to see how we can support that program at the University of Missouri, Columbia (MIZZOU). A video of the meeting was sent to Travis and Ty Figg. Ty, who is a Senior at MIZZOU, had previously expressed an interest in supporting the 5 Rivers program at MIZZOU.
On Friday, October 14, we did our Stream Team twice annual water monitoring at our sample point on the Little Piney. At the sampling we had Jeff Holzem, Lee Kudrna, Sam Potter, Dan Summers, John Wenzlick and myself. Special thanks to Sam for arranging with the owner for us to have access to the private property where our sample point is located. The Little Piney, where we sampled, is in excellent condition with clear water high quality water and a wide diversity of macro invertebrates. The event got started late because I had all the equipment in my car and I had overslept and then got hopelessly lost following the directions Google Maps was giving me. I apologize to all who attended because of how this inconvenienced them. After the sampling all of us, except Sam, had lunch and went fishing on the Little Piney (but not on the property). There were a few trout caught, a few trout got away (all of mine), a few shad were caught and a whole bunch of blue gill were caught.
We still don’t have a volunteer to be the Banquet Chair. Unless we have a volunteer to be Banquet Chair and enough volunteers to have a banquet committee soon we will probably not be having a banquet this year. If someone is willing to take on this task you can set the scope. The Banquet doesn’t need to be as elaborate a fund raising effort as it has been in the past. It can be just a get together with a meal and maybe a item or two to be auctioned.
Doug Grove
douggrove@yahoo.com or 573-999-5114
More on the Little Piney:
We had too many caddis to count and every type of clean water insect except hellgrammites. Dissolved oxygen was over 8 ppm. As Doug mentioned blue gill were plentiful, but a chapter member fished the stream years ago and there were none. Like many “trout” waters the temperature is rising so warm water fish now live there.
More on Five Rivers:
Libby also plans to reach out to the MIZZOU club president to explore ways to connect with our chapter. If he expresses interest, we should invite the club to attend our December meeting and to fish at Bethel or another location. She is not aware of any funding needs, but there may be opportunities.
Water Quality Monitoring Training:
The Introduction to Volunteer Water Quality Monitoring is the entry level of monitoring. This includes training for watershed mapping, site selection, stream discharge, and biological monitoring (for stream macroinvertebrates). Starting in 2021, this workshop consists of a 2-part virtual learning and field training. After completion of the virtual learning, volunteers are eligible to attend the field training to become certified as a water quality monitor. Certified Introductory monitors will receive equipment for measuring stream flow and biological monitoring.
Level 1: Volunteers who have successfully completed the Introductory training and have submitted required data are eligible to attend a Level 1 workshop. This training covers physical assessment, chemical monitoring and reviews biological monitoring. Certified Level 1 monitors will receive equipment for chemical monitoring.
Here is the link to register for the Intro and Level 1 classes: https://mostreamteam.org/assets/intro_level1_schedule.pdf the videos are here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBQMlfy_cD4DQe07cir0nipWVrbQ2np
Virtual trainings Part A 8/23 & 8/25
Part B 8/30 & 9/1
Field Certifications are no longer available this year, but will be offered later.
Climate News:
TU sees significant benefits for trout in the bi-partisan Infrastructure Act “ The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, signed into law this week, is a once-in-a-generation, $1.2 trillion investment to address America’s vast infrastructure needs, protect and restore watershed resilience in the face of climate change, and enable the nation’s green energy future. At Trout Unlimited, we worked diligently on a bipartisan basis to secure significant provisions in the bill that support our mission. With this memo, we are beginning the process of informing staff and volunteer leaders about program funding opportunities provided by the new law.” This link provides more details: https://www.tu.org/magazine/conservation/from-the-field/why-tu-backed-the-infrastructure-and-climate-laws/
Jeff Holzem
Newsletter editor
Council Climate Change Coordinator
NLC Climate Change Workgroup Co-chair
President
Doug Grove
Vice President
Travis Figg
Past President
John Wenzlick
Secretary
Nathan McLeod
Treasurer
Brandon Butler
Banquet Chairs
Alternative Funding Committee
Travis Figg
Education Director
John Wenzlick
Membership
Curt Morgret
Conservancy
Bill Lamberson
Conservancy
Sam Potter
E-Newsletter
Jeff Holzem
Web Master
Ty Figg
Facebook editor
Ben Moore