Allegheny Mountain Chapter of Trout Unlimited

Happy New Year everyone!

The meeting schedule has been updated for 2014.

The next board meeting will be Wednesday January 8 at the DuBois Nursing Home starting at 7 pm.

We are not having a membership meeting in January. Members are invited to attend the Iron Furnace TU Chapter meeting on Wednesday January 22 for a presentation by George Daniel on “Dynamic Nymphing.” This meeting will be held in Clarion starting at 7 pm. You can find more information here.

Please mark your calendars for AMCTU’s 48th annual banquet on April 5, 2014 at the Falls Creek Eagles. As always, it will be a good time with lots of prizes.

The 2014 Keystone Coldwater Conference will be February 21-22 in State College.

Also, note that the National TU Mid-East Regional Meeting will be held on May 31 – June 1 in State College.

On a final note: we are always in need of volunteers for various projects such as youth field days, environmental days, stream assessment and improvement projects, etc. If you would like to donate some of your time this year and want to learn more about volunteering with TU, please contact George Kutskel at maksak@comcast.net or 814-771-4022.

Have a a happy and healthy new year!

State Partnering with Forest Service to Educate the Public

Warren, Pa. – The Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) and United States Forest Service (US Forest Service) are organizing a workshop aimed at training volunteers to identify and report new hemlock woolly adelgid (Adelges tsugae) infestations in northwestern Pennsylvania.

The workshop will be held on Monday, May 6, from 11:00 am – 3:00 pm at the Cook Forest Sawmill Center for the Arts, located at Cook Forest State Park and will feature presentations by Dale Luthringer of DCNR about the Cook Forest infestation and some of the specific old-growth hemlock trees at risk, and by US Forest Service entomologist Rick Turcotte on the adelgid’s biology and the threat it poses to local hemlock forests.  Participants will observe hemlock woolly adelgids first-hand and gain experience in detection, monitoring, and reporting protocols.  Participants will also have the opportunity to volunteer in the “Adopt-a-Hemlock” program to conduct surveys and report new infestations in local hemlock forests.  Participants are asked to dress for the outdoors and to bring lunch and water for the afternoon.

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Thank you to all our members who helped make this year’s 47th annual banquet a success.  We are already planning next years which will be April 5^th at the Falls Creek Eagles.

Wednesday May 8^th our chapter meeting will be an important one for our members wishing to help out with our youth projects.   The chapter will be having the folks from Big Brothers Big Sisters on hand to help fill out the clearance forms to work with children.  There will be no cost to members to get their clearances and we will ask for a second copy so that we are covered at other events involving youth.  We have been informed that we need to have child clearances to take the kids fishing at our Big Brothers Big Sisters event on June 15^th at the Tannery Dam in DuBois starting at 9am.

Also at the meeting on the 8^th we will go over how to ”easily” use Google maps to help locate streams in the unassessed water program the chapter started last month.  Anyone with knowledge of steams in the Clearfield, Jefferson and Elk Counties that hold wild trout should try to attend so we can get these streams surveyed to be added to the wild trout list.  

We can use some help for the Environmental Day at Camp Mountain Run on May 17^th.  Our chapter has been working with the DuBois Area Middle School for several years with this field trip.  We host several stations where the children get hands on experience with collecting bugs, doing habitat assessment, water quality and with National TU this year tie dying T shirts.  We have the hard parts covered, but extra hands make some of the stations go much smoother, if you would like to help out or learn more email me at maksak@comcast.net or call me at 814-771-4022.

We just held our last board meeting last night until August, so if anything comes up look for another email from the chapter. 

Have a Great Summer

George Kutskel, President

There is still time to get your ticket to our annual banquet on April 6^th.  If you want more information or to make a reservation please call George Kutskel at 814-771-4022 by Thursday April 4^th. 

The Chapters April meeting to be held at Martins Grocery Store will be the start of our participation in the Unassessed Waters Initiative. We will have Renae Greiner on hand with maps and lists of streams in Clearfield, Jefferson, and Elk Counties that the PFBC is look for data on. They are asking the chapter to provide any information on fish populations in these unassessed streams. A priority list will be made based on this information, so that those streams we list can be sampled by biologist and determine if they meet the wild trout criteria and be added to the PA Fish and Boat Commissions Wild Trout List.

Also at the April meeting, we will also discuss the timeline for this pilot project. If all goes well, the PA Fish and Boat Commission plans to launch the program state-wide in 2014. We would like to invite all local trout fisherman to attend the meeting and consider helping out with this monumental effort to get wild trout streams protected.

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