Allegheny Mountain Chapter of Trout Unlimited

Our October meeting will be this coming Wednesday October 14, 2015 at 7 pm at Martin’s Grocery Stores Community Room in DuBois. Shawn Rummel will be presenting and update on TU’s efforts to recover the West Branch of the Susquehanna from past mining practices. He will also be talking about TU efforts in finding steams with reproducing trout populations. Hope to see you here!

Wednesday will also be election of officers so your voice needs to be heard. All Chapter members are encouraged to come out and vote.

In other news:

– Kelly Williams is looking to host two family fishing events like the one we held at the Tannery Dam last May. These are great events to promote fishing and to introduce kids and parents alike to the sport we all enjoy. This is also a great time to showcase thing that the chapter is doing. All this sounds good, but it cannot happen unless we have people willing to help out. The chapter will have several planning meetings to work on this and the 50^th banquet. Members that are interested should send me an email at maksak@comcast.net so we can pick the times best suited to plan these events.

– We are submitting the permit work to begin a project on Wilson Run in Northern Clearfield County.Again like all things we do we will need people.We would hope to have the permit and begin work in the summer of 2016.

– We had two members step up to help with the DuBois Middle School Fly Fishing Club. We really could use some additional help as they will not be able to participate each month. This club meets once per month on the 1^st Wednesday from 1:30 till 2:30pm.While fly tying is a component of the club it is not the only thing to be covered.Casting and knot tying can also be a part of the club.If interested please contact me.

– We are looking for someone to host our weekly fly tying roundtable or as Eric liked to call it tying and lying. Two things need to come together to make this happen. One is someone to take charge and people to show up to either tie or tell stories. As with many fun things we tend to burn out our volunteers, this doesn’t take a lot of effort it does require a commitment of several weeks. Let’s hear from our members if there is an interest.

Calendar of Events

October 14, 2015: State of the Susquehanna and its tributaries.

November 4, 2015: Board of Directors reorganizational meeting Hoss’s Steak House

November 11, 2015: Learn some new fly patterns with Mark Hanes.

TBA : Planning meeting for banquet and other events for the coming year.

If you need more information, contact George at maksak@comcast.net or 814-771-4022.

I hope that the New Year has gotten off to a great start and no one has frost bite. We will be kicking off our chapter meeting this week January 14 at 7 pm in the Community Room at Martins Grocery Store in DuBois. I would ask that as many members as possible try and come to this meeting. This will be a joint board and membership meeting so it will be an opportunity to learn how the chapter functions and some of the many projects we are working on will be discussed. The program will be Alex Micknis who attended the Fly Fishing and Youth Camp at the Allenberry Resort. The applications are currently being accepted for students age 14-17. We have sent a student almost every year and this is your chance to learn firsthand how much fun these kids have while learning more about fly fishing and cold water conservation.

Joe Buterbaugh reports that the annual raffle tickets are in and he will have these available that evening as well. We are also going to be doing the place mat for the banquet again and we need your help in securing advertisers. The cost is the same this year $25.00 for a business card size ad around the border. If you have a business or know someone who would like to reach out to the local fishing community let me or Kelly Williams know. Space is limited so don’t delay.

Don’t forget the 49th annual banquet is early this year March 28 and will again be at the Falls Creek Eagles. If you have a hobby like woodcraft or art please consider making a donation for this fundraiser. Also if you have connections with local merchants we can use your help soliciting prizes to be used in our raffles at the banquet. I have several fly boxes that if some of our members would tie some flies we could easily raffle them off as well. Please help if you can.

We have lost several directors in the past couple of months so we are in need of finding some people who would like to be more involved in the chapter. Please if you have any interests try and come out Wednesday and we can talk. Just in case you have not heard, we lost Joe Fieo and Dr. Lungren. Both will be sadly missed.

February’s membership meeting will feature Bill Anderson from the Little Juanita River Association. He will be giving an update on the river as well as sharing some tying patterns for success on some of the “famous” hatches. This will also be held at Martins on February 11 at 7 pm.

Our Chapter has been involved in the unassessed waters program for the past two years. We plan on continuing with it, but like many projects we need more people to get involved. I will be attending a training session sometime in February in Bellefonte. We will have a speaker at the March meeting to talk more about this and I would hope we have some members who wish to participate in this.

Thank you
George Kutskel,
President AMCTU

If you need more information, contact George at maksak@comcast.net or 814-771-4022.