Allegheny Mountain Chapter of Trout Unlimited

59^th Annual Fundraiser

On April 12^th we held our annual fundraiser at the DuBois VFW. 120 people attended and from the feedback it was a success. The prizes this year were among the best in years with the highlight being the Blackstone grill along with a pizza oven and a 40” tv. The rod raffle had 9 prizes this year along with two special rod raffles and a special knife raffle. Kudos to Kelly Williams for chairing the fundraiser again this year. There are a lot of behind the scenes work to make the evening special. We would like to thank our sponsors for the special fly rod, reel and line along with a sponsor print both from Spitzer Subaru/Chevrolet GMC in DuBois. Color TV from Karen Yanek At Home Reality. There is a lot of behind the scenes work to make the evening great. In addition to these many of our members stepped up to provide some fantastic prizes for the bucket raffles. We offer a BIG THANK YOU to all who helped with setting up and soliciting and donating prizes. The annual ticket raffle that all our members received in the mail was also a success with the winners being:

1^st prize $500.; Dave Miller with Bruce Miller receiving the $100 bonus for selling with winning ticket.

2nd prize; $200 Ryan Ishman

3^rd prize; $100 Sharon Malloy

The food was also very good, and the facility was great, and we have booked it for next year, which will be April 11, 2026. Mark your calendar and be sure to attend as this will be our 60^th anniversary of the chapter and we will make it special for all attendees.

Congratulations Dave

This years Golden Reel Award recipient was Dave London. Dave has been involved in the chapter for a very long time serving on the board during the late 80’s into the 90’s and took a break to earn a living and now in semi-retirement has not only rejoined the board but took on the Vice President position as well as meeting coordinator. He is chairing the Punxsutawney Elementary School Environmental Day. Not only does Dave join an elite group of fellow TU’ers but also marks a father son duo as his father Edwin was a past recipient for our highest honor.

DuBois Cleanup Day

We’ve all heard that when it rains it pours. Well, this year due to Easter on the Earth Day weekend the cleanup day was the same as our fundraiser. We have done this every year for the past 5 or so and it looked like this year was going to be a miss. We reached out to Samantha Snedden to see if she could chair this event as all the board members that had helped in the past were not able. She agreed and thanks to her and her family along with Brad Haines they were able to continue the tradition. We have always cleaned up the area around the Tannery Dam. Samantha attended the Wildlife Leadership Academy last year and has become a youth leader. Thank you, Samantha.

Dr Blakeslee Memorial Forest Cleanup

Mark you calendar for May 5^th to lend a hand with our annual cleanup of the parking lot and trails in the forest area. This is an annual event, and we usually have some help from the PA Wildlife Habitat group and is chaired by our own Matt Marusiak from the Western PA Conservancy.

Fly Tying Roundtable and Classes

Both wrapped up in March and were a success. Attendance at our roundtables was off a bit from past years but still the people who attended enjoyed the camaraderie along with getting some flies tied. Our class graduated 5 students after 6weeks. Most likely our class next year will be held in Punxsutawney if a location and interest is found. Stay tuned for details.

Fly Fishing Club

The DuBois Middle School Fly Fishing Club will be wrapping up the school year with our outing at Camp Mountain Run on May 2^nd. Each year we take the club to the lake at the camp for a afternoon of fly fishing. We provide lunch as well as all the flies and rods. If interested in helping that day call George Kutskel at 814-371-9290. We have several already on board to help the kids catch fish on flies, but there is always room for some more. We did some fly tying at school this year thanks to Dave Kemitis for lending a hand the kids were able to learn to tie basic caddis larva and a mop fly.

Environmental Day

Once again we will be hosting the 8^th grade at Camp Mountain Run on May 16^th. We will have members from National Trout Unlimited on hand to electroshock the stream, collecting macros, fishing, habitat assessment, and invasive species. We will once again have the Brockway FFA student on hand to help where needed. As with all our events involving young people to help you must have your clearances which are free to receive. For details on how to get them email the chapter at amctu036@gmail.com

Punxsutawney Elementary School’s day will be Tuesday May 27^th from 8:30 until 2pm. This is a fun day with the students and is held at the school grounds. Dave London is chairing the day this year if interested email the chapter at the address above.

Picnic Time

We have two opportunities for you to eat some good food and meet some great people this year. May 21^st we will join the Iron Furnace Chapter for a picnic at Walter Dick Park in Brookville. As we have done in the past the chapter will provide the meats and Iron Furnace will provide drinks and place settings. All you need to bring is a dish to pass and your fly rod to catch the evening hatch. We will be eating around 6pm and not to worry if its raining as we will be in the pavilion near the parking lot.

Our second picnic will be July 13^th at Bendigo State Park. If you’ve never been here this is a great venue. There is an inground pool for swimming as well as some of the coldest water in the state for those who would rather go fishing. We provide all the food and if would be great to see more of our members attending one or both of these FREE events.

Facebook and Social Media

We had an issue with our Facebook page earlier this year and now have a new page along with more people able to add content. Kelly has provided a QR code to help load the page for your convenience see below. Also check our website for updates on chapter happenings www.amctu.org

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While it has been posted on Facebook by many of our members, but in case you missed it. 

Congratulations to Kelly Williams for being honored as the Environmental Professional at the PA Wilds awards ceremony at Gobblers Knob in Punxsutawney on July 27th.  Kelly’s work in helping to reverse the pollution caused by past mining practices. In her “spare” time she serves on several boards including our chapter.

Kelly was only one of two Allegheny Mountain winners.

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Annual Fundraiser

We held our 57^th annual fundraiser on March 25^th. The crowd was down from the last few events, but we were competing with many other fundraisers that evening along with mentored youth day. Still a good time was had by all in attendance. Winners of this year’s annual were:

1^st prize Matt Hershberger

2^nd Kacie Rieg

3^rd Chaz Buterbaugh

Attendees had a chance to win a kayak, custom knife, donated by Chris Ireland, Winston Fly Rod as well as our usual fine spread of bucket prizes.

Due to needing to purchase many of the prizes and giveaway items the net take for the night was much below last years record. We thank the members and guess that helped by donating a prize that made this years event offer some excellent choices.

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Board Meeting

We held our meeting Thursday March 24th at the Lakeside Methodist Church. We welcomed our new Director Dave London back to the board. Kelly assigned tasks for all at the annual fundraiser to be held on April 9th. Codey gave out a list of dates for chapter activities up to September. A full list of these will be at the end of the newsletter. After the two years with little or no activities it feels good to be back to active mode. We wrapped up our fly-tying roundtable with our session on March 14th. We hosted boy scouts from Curwensville who were learning to tie a fly and catch a fish to earn their merit badge. Thanks to those in attendance lending a hand and helping these boys tie their flies. If you want winter to pass quickly, then mark your calendar for January 2023 when we will once again have the weekly fly-tying roundtable.

Membership Meetings

March 21st, we held our monthly membership meeting, and we were able to have Clearfield County WCO Justin Schillaci come give us an update of the upcoming trout season. We also had Dan Collins come to our February membership meeting with a presentation on his time working for Trout Unlimited. Chapter member Tony Kumitis came to our roundtable and gave a presentation on his work in Wyoming last summer for the Fish and Wildlife Department. The plan is to start back up with monthly meetings with the next two being a field trip and picnic before our usual summer break.

We joined with the Jefferson County Conservation District in applying for a Cold-Water Heritage Grant for Clover Run. The chapter looks forward to helping create a conservation plan and hopefully remove the remnants of the old Punxsutawney reservoir. We have not yet heard as to whether or not the grant was accepted and should hear shortly.

56th Annual Banquet

We had a fun debate on whether this was our 56 or 54 due to the loss of two years from Covid. Since the chapter started in 1966 and we have had some sort of fundraiser every year. I’m going with this being the 56th annual.

April 9th marked our annual fundraising dinner after a two-year break. We had a good attendance and was great to see everyone again after being shut in for so long.

Winners in our annual raffle (Yellow tickets)

1st Prize Gary Lyons $400

2nd Wendy Steele $100.

3rd Joyce London $50.

Congratulations to Rich Ferrara being awarded the Golden Reel Award this year at the banquet. Rich was honored with the work he has done with setting up our new shed and the presentations he has given on Euro nymphing and teaching fly tying.

If you missed this year, here is the save the date on next year. We will once again be at the Falls Creek Eagles the date will be March 25th due to Easter being the 2nd Saturday of April.

We will need some help in preparing for next year’s fundraiser, if you’re interested in lending a hand, please reach out to one of our directors. We really need to have help soliciting prizes and it’s never too early to start.

Dates to remember:

April 23rd Earth Day Clean up at the Tannery Dam in DuBois meet at the lake 8:30

April 23rd Family fishing event sponsored by the Chapter and Lakeside Methodist Church. Help needed to assist kids fishing. Meet at the Tannery at 10am

April 25th Chapter meeting at Cardiff mine reclamation. Meet at St Joseph Church in Force at 6PM

May 6 DuBois Middle School Fly fishing outing at the Tannery Dam

May 12 Cleanup at the Dr Blakeslee Memorial Forest in Medix Run. Meet at the parking lot on 555

May 14th DuBois Girl Scout family fishing at Camp Mountain Run. Help needed to assist the girls fishing.

May 18th Our annual picnic at Walter Dick Park in Brookville. Bring a covered dish to pass. Also bring your fishing gear.

May 20th DuBois Area Middle School Environmental Day at Camp Mountain Run

June 3rd Clearfield County Youth Field Days we host the macro collection for the kids always can use extra hands.

June 25th Jefferson County Youth Field Days Renlow Park. We host the kids fishing at the lake.

August 28th Chapter Picnic with Jim Zwald Chapter Bendigo State Park. We supply all the food

Some background on some of the above.

The April 25th meeting, we will be touring the old Cardiff mine site on Cherry Run in Force. The chapter donated $3000 to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy to build passive treatment and replant the area as well as removing a large mound of red dog that was polluting Cherry Run which was unable to hold fish once it flowed into the old mine area.

May 12 We made a major donation to the Dr Blakeslee Memorial Forest to make this area happen and to keep it looking good, the chapter does a cleanup of the area removing dead trees that have fallen on the trails and clearing brush as well. It usually doesn’t take that long so there is time to fish either Bennetts Branch or one of the other streams in the area.

The youth events can always use additional help and it is very easy to get the clearances to work with children. Please consider helping us so we can maintain these very worthwhile events. The field days and the environmental day are very fun and easy to help with as you do not need to be an expert in any field just a willingness to help. .

May 18th and August 28th are chapter picnics and really a good time to just hang out with members share some stories or even cast a line.

As stated above the 18th the chapter will provide the meat and buns all we ask is that you bring a dish to pass. Since it is at the park on the North Fork in the fly fishing only section you are sure to have many fish to try and catch. This is a family event so pack up your children and bring your spouse or significant other for a fun night.

August 28th is our annual picnic with the Jim Zwald Chapter held at Bendigo State Park. We provide ALL the food for this event so all we ask is let us know you will be attending and show up. This is catered so it’s not the usual picnic fair. We have pulled pork, hot & sweet sausage, hot dogs, various salads, baked beans and of course deserts. We have reserved pavilion #1 which can seat 60. We know this is a little bit of a road trip, but it offers a swimming pool and trout fishing regardless of the weather due to being a tailwater fishery that never gets above 65.

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Looks like the dark days from the pandemic are behind us and life can start to return to a more normal routine. With that said we are having a Chapter picnic on August 28^th at Bendigo State Park just north of Johnsonburg. We will be eating at noon and if the past is a good indicator there will be enough food for dinner as well. As was reported in the previous newsletter the Chapter is supplying everything except your attendance. We need a head count so we can let the caterer know how much food to supply.

PLEASE let us know if you can attend and how many people will be with you. You can email your RSVP to the chapter email at amctu036@gmail.com or call (814)371-9290 and leave a message. We need to hear from you by the 22^nd of August. The Jim Zwald Chapter will be joining us as well so it should be a fun day.

Just some fyi on the site at Bendigo. The East Branch of the Clarion is right in the park and even though it is late August the water will be cold, and trout will still be there to supply some fishing to anyone wishing to give it a shot. The Park also has a swimming pool and a kiddie’s pool with lifeguards on duty. We have pavilion # 1 which can seat a large group under roof so weather should not be an issue either. If you are not into fishing or swimming, there is a hiking path that follows the river and loops back to the park.

Other Chapter happenings

President Codey met with PATU Council Chair Greg Malaska in May. In addition to getting together they also looked at some of our chapter projects. The annual fall meeting will be held in the Bedford area in September so look for additional details as they come out.

Members of our chapter met with the Western PA Conservancy and students from Indiana State University the last week in May to electro fish the Sandy Lick in the DHALO section that the habitat work was done last summer. Even with the hot weather and low flows that were common in late May many trout were still using the cross vain and some of the undercuts in this section. They also found many species of other fish as well.

We once again hosted the macro invertebrate station at the Clearfield County Youth Field Day at Camp Mountain Run in June. Big thanks to Doug Wolfe for chairing this station and to all those who helped.

Our 1^st outing post pandemic was a picnic at Walter Dick Park in Brookville. We had a great attendance and a good time fishing and just catching up with all after a year of not meeting.

The Chapters fundraiser is back on the calendar for 2022 the date is April 9^th at the Falls Creek Eagles. Mark, your calendar as this should be a BIG event since we have not held our fundraiser dinner for two years.

We should be starting to hold our monthly meeting starting in September if we secure a site. Our hope is that Penn State will allow meetings with the start of the school year. We also look forward to our weekly fly-tying roundtable starting in January. No word has been received if the DuBois Area Middle School will be holding their fly-fishing club or that the Environmental Day is going to be held. We will keep everyone posted as we progress into the fall season.

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Happy 2021 we hope it is better than 2020 was. We want to give an update to our members of all the happening since October. As stated in the last newsletter we held the October membership meeting outdoors at the Tannery Dam. All the officers were reelected, and Rich Ferrara and Steve Maleski were also reelected. Kelly Williams has been elected to Regional VP with State Council and gave an update of what was happening there. She stated that all the chapters as well as council have been negatively impacted by the corona virus and are finding ways to work around it. We did not receive a reply to the letter we wrote to Ole Bull State Park about the fish ladder, but we received word from a member that it has been removed and fish can move throughout the watershed. It was also decided that we would hold our annual organizational dinner at Hoss’s on November 5^th.

No business was conducted at the dinner and our next board meeting would be in January.

1^st Quarter Board Meeting

We held our 1^st quarter board meeting on January 14^th via zoom. As expected, the main topic was the Annual Fundraiser that is scheduled to be held April 10^th. This fundraiser dinner has been CANCELED!

We felt that it would still be unsafe to host a large gathering at this time. It does present a problem though. We have been spending more than we have brought in and with donations that will be talked about later in this letter, along with just keeping the chapter up and running. Our cash flow has been nonexistent. Also, the move to a larger storage unit and purchasing shelves and totes to organize our supplies while within the budget still was more than what we raised in 2020. With this said, we are still holding our annual raffle. The prizes will be the same as last year, CASH! All our members will once again receive a book of tickets and it is hoped you can purchase them. if you can sell more, we really need the help since this is the only fundraiser, we are having this year.

We still have several projects that were not done this past year. We have a joint project with the PA Game Commission on Clover Run. We were asked to investigate some maintenance on habitat work we had done years ago on Big Run Creek, as well as the Coldwater Heritage Project on the same stream. We found that the Western PA Conservancy received funding for riparian work on the Clarion River at Clear Creek. We had done a planting to help stabilize the bank along this stretch with help from students at Brockway Area Schools two years ago, so this is welcome news. The Conservancy is also planning to do some habitat work in Clear Creek itself, so watch the website or future newsletters for updates and details.

HELP NEEDED

Matt Marusiak asked for some help for trimming and general maintenance on Western Pennsylvania Conservancy’s Dr Colson Blakeslee Memorial Recreation Area property in Medix Run. This property is right along 555 just past the turn to Quehanna. A spring clean-up workday is scheduled for Monday April 26^th at 10am in the parking area and we encourage a good turn-out. It is hoped that a couple of our members would then be willing to help regularly maintain the parking area and the area around Doc’s memorial to keep it from getting overgrown throughout the summer. It would be great to see some of our members that day and maybe even do a little fishing afterwards. If you are able to come, or need more details or directions, please reach out to Matt at mmarusiak@paconserve.org or 814-771-4136.

Other items voted on at the meeting.

As stated above this meeting was a zoom meeting that allows other to see each other and talk or to call in and participate. We decided to purchase a nonprofit license so we can use this platform for other meetings and events.

We are awarding the following nonprofits:

PATU- $500.00

Western PA Conservancy -$500 (Matt Marusiak recused himself)

Toby Creek Watershed for tree planting-$100.

Kettle Creek Watershed-$100

Headwaters RC&D Council-$100

Prior to the October meeting several members met at the McCracken Run Storage to move out all the items used by the chapter to our new unit in Rathmel. We found items that we forgot that we owned. Big Thanks goes out to Doug Wolfe and Rich Ferrara, they spent a Sunday going through and organizing the merchandise and putting them in new totes, as well as building the shelves. Anyone who ever seen the old shed would be amazed how nice it now looks. Once we moved in it was very clear that a larger unit then the one we had was needed. Thanks to A&R Storage for helping in securing a 10×10 unit. Again, thanks to Doug the move to the larger unit was accomplished with little issues.

We have some items still, at the old shed, if anyone is interested: 4×4 cork board; file cabinet; old projectors and cubical dividers. We will be cleaning out the balance of item near the end of February, there may be other items there as well. If interested email the chapter at amctu036@gmail.com by February 28^th or it goes away forever.

We had many folks ask if we would be hosting our weekly flytying roundtable. Once again due to the virus we canceled this. There may be a chance the someone would like to host this virtually via zoom, then this may be the way we go.

Along with the banquet so were all school events canceled this year. Perhaps later this year the chapter can host a Family Fishing Event. Watch the website for updates on current events and cancelations.

We had a discussion on the removal of several dams on some of our small streams that are no longer used or in major need of repair. While some folks like to fish dams most dams on small streams do very little the help the watershed or the trout as they raise the temperature of the water downstream. No specifics were given just that the chapter would be looking to the best agency to help with the removal.

In case some do not know we now have new Waterways Conservation Officers in both Clearfield and Jefferson County. Justin Schillaci in Clearfield and Shania Painter in Jefferson. It would be great to host a virtual meeting between now and the “official” start of trout season. We may also have other virtual meetings if there is interest.

We have not talked to Terry at Jim’s Sports, but keep an eye out for his anniversary sell in March. We have been supporters of his sale, tying flies and selling raffle tickets and giving fishing tips. Hopefully, this event will be held in some fashion this spring.

As seen above we do have a chapter email. If everyone who receives our newsletter would send an email to the amctu036@gmail.com address, we would be able to easily send notices of thing the chapter is doing. We have used the email from National TU, but we notice that the # of members who wish to receive email through National keeps dropping. Newsletters are great but it seems like it becomes harder and harder to keep them coming out at least quarterly. We know that email is not the answer either, but by using all of them together, email, website, and newsletter, we should be able to provide everyone with what the chapter is doing.

The Chapter hopes that we soon can get together as we have in the past and we hope that everyone stays safe.

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The officers and directors met on August 20, 2020 at the pavilion at Tannery Dam in DuBois to discuss chapter activities and projects. As everyone knows, this has been a crazy year, and many events were canceled. For the first time since 1966, we did not have our Annual Banquet. We were still able to conduct our annual raffle – thank you all who purchased or sold your raffle tickets. The winners of the raffle were: 1st prize Rich Ferrera; 2nd prize Fred Griffith; and 3rd prize Dave Lazorchak. We netted $2459 from the raffle.

We are hoping to get more back to normal in 2021, and we have the Falls Creek Eagles reserved for the Annual Banquet on April 10, 2021. We also are discussing ways to hold the fly-tying round-table.

We still need to hold an annual meeting and election of officers. We have tried to find the best way to do this. After a lot of thought it was decided that we will hold the election outside at the pavilion at the Tannery Dam. We feel that this would be the best as we were going to do a call in, but the logistics just did not seem to fit for an election. Please join us at 6 pm on October 15, 2020 to vote for the officers and directors for the next year.

Nominations for officers are:
President: Codey Schlemmer
Vice President: Matt Marusiak
Secretary-Treasurer: George Kutskel

Please join the meeting if you can. If you have interest in any officer or director position or in making other nominations, please contact George Kutskel. Nominations also can be taken from the floor prior to the election.

We hope everyone stays sane and healthy through this crazy time and hope to see you all soon.

If you need more information, please contact George Kutskel at 814-371-9290 or maksak@comcast.net.

Check the website amctu.org or AMCTU facebook page for latest details on programs and events.

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