Allegheny Mountain Chapter of Trout Unlimited

2017 AMCTU Officers and Directors

AMCTU membership elects officers and directors annually in October. Below are the officers and board of directors for 2017.

President: George Kutskel; Vice President: Matt Marusiak; Secretary-Treasurer: Joe Buterbaugh

Directors: Marty Hrin, Edwin London, Codey Schlemmer, Sam Sleigh, Ken Undercoffer, Kelly Williams, Eric Wilson, and Doug Wolfe

Big congratulations and thank you to these members willing to serve as AMCTU leaders – it can be a lot of work, but it is a lot of fun too! We are always looking for people interested in being an officer or director. Feel free to reach out to anyone on the board if you are interested in learning more.

Important Dates for 2017

2017 is right around the corner. We try to find dates and times for meetings that work best for most everyone (it is challenging) and this year we are moving all meetings to Tuesday evenings. The officers and directors will meet quarterly on first Tuesdays starting in February. Membership meeting and programs will be held on the third Tuesdays, except during the summer. Please mark your calendar for the meeting dates listed below.

Board meetings will be held on February 7, May 2, August 1, and November 7 (reorganization meeting). Board meetings begin at 7 pm and are held at the DuBois Nursing Home, except for the reorganization meeting which begins at 6 pm and is held at Hoss’s. All membership is welcomed to attend board meeting.

Membership meeting and programs will be held on January 17, February 21, March, 21, April 18, September 19, October 17 (annual meeting and election of officers), and November 21. Membership meetings start at 7 pm and are held in the Community Room at the Martin’s Grocery Store in DuBois. We will have our annual picnic in May, the date to be determined. All membership meetings are open to the public. We are planning some good programs for next year – check our website http://www.amctu.org for latest meeting information.

The 51st AMCTU Annual Banquet and Trout Kick-off will be held on April 1 at the Falls Creek Eagles. Kelly Williams will chair the banquet committee again and is always looking for help. She can be reached at kwilliamsccd@atlanticbbn.net or 814-591-1299.

Our annual environmental day with students from the DuBois Middle School will be held on May 19 at Camp Mountain Run. Please contact George Kutskel at maksak@comcast.net or 814-771-4022 if you can help out with this event.

AMCTU Programs and Projects

Youth Engagement
One of our chapter’s goals is to engage more youth and we host or participate in several programs specifically for youth. In 2016, we participated in both the Clearfield County and Jefferson County Youth Field Days, the Environmental Day for the DuBois Middle School, the Watershed Day for Brockway School District, and again hosted our annual Big Brother-Big Sister Fly Fishing Outing. We also held a “Smart Anglers” event at the Curwensville Lake Watershed Festival and hosted a family fishing event at the Tannery Dam in DuBois. We intend to do many of these same events in 2017, and will let you know the dates as they are finalized in our newsletter and on our website.

We are working with the DuBois Middle School’s fly-fishing club and new environmental science honors programs to connect students with hands-on issues in the outdoors. We also continue to support the Trout in the Classroom (TIC) program, and we provide equipment and technical support for TIC in six classrooms across four school districts in the region.

Finding the people and time to cover all these programs is challenging, so if you are interested in helping with any of these, please contact George Kutskel at maksak@comcast.net or 814-771-4022.

Wilson Run
Under Kelly Williams’s leadership, the chapter completed a habitat and bank stabilization project on Wilson Run near Penfield. This included installing eight log vanes to keep the creek from eroding the yard and providing education to the landowner on good mowing practices (i.e., maintaining a vegetated, un-mowed buffer along the stream edge). Funding for the project was provided by the Headwaters RC&D Council Sinnemahoning Watershed Grant Program.

Camp Run
I am sure that long-time members are aware of AMCTU’s decades-long efforts in attempting to remediate acid mine drainage (AMD) in the Camp Run drainage in Clinton County. We recently received some good news from the PA Department of Environmental Protection – Bureau of Abandoned Mines Reclamation (BAMR). They have funding to re-mine and properly reclaim the Fran Contracting site starting in 2017, which will hopefully clean up the AMD from this site and help restore Camp and Rock Run, tributaries to Cook Run. We will continue to update members on this project as it progresses. It is due to the long dedication of folks like the late Dr. Blakeslee and George Kutskel that we have gotten this far – so there may now be light at the end of the tunnel!

Sandy Lick Creek
The chapter continues to work with the City of DuBois, Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, Clearfield County Conservation District, and Jason Reed of Stahl Sheaffer Engineering to install stream habitat and bank stabilization in the flood control section of the Sandy Lick Creek in DuBois. This portion of the Sandy Lick is a delayed-harvest trout water, and this project will make the fishing even better as well as help remove silt from the stream channel. The design and permitting are complete, and funds are still being raised for the materials and construction. A lot of the work will require heavy machinery, but some of the structures will need to be built by hand, so as this progresses, we will be looking for volunteers who want to get their hands dirty and feet wet.

Chapter Communications
We are making more of a commitment to keep the website up-to-date and to provide quarterly newsletters. If you have any comments on the newsletter or website, feel free to reach out to Matt Marusiak at mfmarusiak@gmail.com. We also have an “Allegheny Mountain Chapter of Trout Unlimited” facebook page that Kelly Williams is maintaining, which provides the latest breaking news.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Make a New Year’s resolution to work – and have fun – with your TU chapter in 2017!