Welcome to our new weekly roundup of news from across the world of fly fishing. Every Monday, we’ll bring you up to speed on interesting stories, new records, important conservation news, and anything else we think you should know about.
Here’s a great video from the
Field&Stream conservation blog, featuring a group of teenagers from Meeteetse, Wyoming getting together to plant willows along a trout stream to restore vital Yellowstone Cutthroat habitat. The event’s organizers seem to have done a great job building camaraderie among the kids and making the whole event fun–all for the benefit of Wyoming’s native trout.
I never tire of these stories about the healing powers of fly fishing. Last week saw two great news stories about veterans enjoying a wilderness experience. First, writing in North Carolina’s Mountain Xpress, PTSD sufferer Jerry Nelson describes a
great outing on Idaho’s South Fork of the Snake River hosted by
Rivers of Recovery, in which men who had never met before discovered kinship in shared experiences. Meanwhile, in Silverthorne, Colorado,
Project Healing Waters held a similar event on the Blue River, and the volunteer guides involved cherish the opportunity to
give something back to veterans who have given so much already.
Ready to plan your next fishing adventure? Great articles came online last week about two famous destinations and one unexpected out-of-the-way gem. First, Spencer Turner recaps an amazing trip to the Green River in Flaming Gorge in eastern Utah. Next, 17-year-old Trevor Anderson offers a brief tale of a recent trip to fly-fish through Yellowstone National Park. Finally, if you’re ever stuck in the corn belt and need a trout fix, you might want to check out the East Branch of Verdigre Creek in eastern Iowa. Working on the premise that “If you stock it, they will come,” game managers put a couple hundred rainbows per week in one of the state’s few streams that feature decent trout habitat.
Finally, Nevada fisheries biologists are looking to return the Lahontan cutthroat to one of its native waters: Lake Tahoe. Although the species had been present in the big, clear lake some 70,000 years, by 1938 it had been wiped out by overharvest and the introduction of lake trout. According to the North Tahoe Bonanza, “The catchable fish are about 9 inches long, according to the most recent press release. Lake Tahoe used to be one of the historic locations for these magnificent trout that would grow to huge proportions. The California state record was caught in Lake Tahoe in 1911 by William Pomin, weighing in at an impressive 31 pounds, 8 ounces.”
