Lessons learned from innocent fishing tourney

The Coloradoan

The Denver chapter of Trout Unlimited, a group committed to “conserving, protecting, and restoring North America’s coldwater fisheries and their watersheds,” held its second annual Pro-Am Carp Slam. The event took place on the South Platte River from Evans Avenue in Denver north to Thornton.

Thirteen teams consisting of one professional and one amateur fished two “beats” each, one section in the morning and a different section in the afternoon.

http://www.coloradoan.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081012/ENTERTAINMENT06/810120301

Inner City Outings now has Boulder County focus

Kelsey Wilkinson, For the Camera
August 6, 2008

One event that the Boulder Inner City Outings program has created, with help from a grant, shows children how to do water sampling along Goose Creek. Trout Unlimited sponsors fly-fishing afterward.

The itinerary is now copied nationally after it became one of the most popular outings in the Boulder program.

The group also offers a one-hour, monthly class after school that teaches skills such as using maps, navigating with a compass, weather forecasting and basic leadership skills.

http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2008/aug/06/inner-city-outings-now-has-boulder-county-focus/

Spills on Roan Plateau highlight need to safeguard important fish and game habitat

Impacts of 1.2 million gallons of drilling mud in stream drainage not yet known

 RIFLE—Accidental spills of at least 1.2 million gallons of industrial drilling mud into Garden Gulch and eventually West Parachute Creek on the Roan Plateau demonstrate the importance of protecting the Roan’s sensitive watersheds containing native Colorado River cutthroat trout from future industrial drilling, according to Sportsmen for the Roan Plateau, a coalition of hunters, anglers and sporting organizations from all over Colorado.

“Accidents unfortunately happen, and we’re lucky this spill didn’t occur in a more sensitive drainage that contains important populations of native cutthroat trout,” said Corey Fisher, a field coordinator for Trout Unlimited and a member of the coalition. “This just makes it all the more important to carefully approach the development of the Roan, particularly those portions that contain irreplaceable habitat for fish and wildlife and, by extension, hunters and anglers. What’s more, it highlights weaknesses within existing federal energy regulations that need to be shored up, and shored up quickly.”

Fisher referenced existing laws that exempt the energy industry from stormwater runoff regulations within the federal Clean Water Act. Had industry not been exempt, it’s possible more care would have been taken with the fluids on the sites of the spills, and they would not have been allowed to enter the stream drainage.

In total, four separate spills occurred on private land on the western portion of the Roan Plateau. While drilling is occurring within the Roan Plateau Planning Area, there is no drilling where genetically pure Colorado River cutthroat trout live in Trapper Creek, Northwater Creek and the East Fork of Parachute Creek, all of which eventually end up in the Colorado River. However, the Bureau of Land Management has announced plans to lease and drill the planning area, and its own documents predict an acute impact on those native fish populations. The planning area is also home to trophy deer and elk herds, as well as healthy populations of ruffed grouse, blue grouse and huntable populations of black bear and mountain lion.

“These large spills should completely dispel any notion that natural gas drilling can be done in sensitive wildlife habitat without the risk of an accident that causes drastic harm,” said Suzanne O’Neill, executive director of the Colorado Wildlife Federation. “If an area of the Roan Plateau rim has to be drilled at all, it should be limited to an area where a spill would present the least amount of risk to wildlife, such as Corral Ridge outside of cutthroat trout watersheds.”

The spills were announced by the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission on Thursday—two were reported to the commission, and two were not. The spills took place between November 2007 and February 2008. Apparently, the largest spill of about 30,000 barrels of drilling mud—or 1.2 million gallons—occurred in Garden Gulch, a tributary to the West Fork of Parachute Creek. According to the commission, some of the spilled mud is still frozen in a waterfall.

“Drilling mud is really more of a mixture of water or oils and certain other contents, like bentonite or barite, as well as other unknown chemicals,” said John Trammell, a geologist by trade and a member of Grand Valley Anglers in Grand Junction. His organization has put thousands of volunteer hours and invested thousands of dollars into a project on Trapper Creek to protect the stream’s headwaters, which provide critical spawning and rearing habitat for native trout. “Barite gives the ‘mud’ weight, and bentonite is expandable clay that fills in fissures and seals formations. The other ingredients area usually proprietary and depend on the energy company.”

Of particular interest to sportsmen, Trammell said, is the bentonite, which, when released in large amounts, can coat the bottom of a trout stream, smothering spawning gravels and kill off insects on which trout feed. The other ingredients in the concoction, while unknown, “are certainly not things you want in a trout stream.”

Efforts by sportsmen continue, not only to protect the Roan, but to reform federal energy regulations that allow the industry to skirt stormwater runoff rules that apply to other industrial operations.

“We need better energy legislation from Congress,” Fisher said. “We can develop our oil and gas resources responsibly, but the industry needs to be held accountable to elementary clean water and clean air laws. After all, water flows downhill, and while fish and game are the immediate victims of accidents like this, people will eventually be affected, too.”

Additionally, according to David Nickum, executive director of Colorado Trout Unlimited, the spills should demonstrate the need to move forward with an ongoing rulemaking effort that would govern how the state Oil and Gas Conservation Commission reviews energy drilling within Colorado.

“The pace and scale of development now being experienced, and the increased movement into areas of higher environmental significance, makes it vital that Colorado take a hard look at the rules and update them to ensure public health, fish and wildlife, and other key values are protected,” he said.

Trout Unlimited to Consider Southern Delivery System at March Meeting

The potential recreational and environmental effects of the planned Southern Delivery System pipeline from Pueblo Dam to Colorado Springs will be the topic under discussion at the March 13 meeting of Trout Unlimited in Pueblo. Drew Peternell, Colorado Trout Unlimited’s lawyer and the Director of the Colorado Water Project, will address concerns about the pipeline as it is currently presented in the Draft Environmental Impact Statement. See Southern Delivery System EIS.  This is an important meeting to the future of recreation on the AK River through Pueblo! Please attend, if at all possible!

 THURSDAY, March 13, 7:00 p.m.

 Jones-Healy Realty, 119 W. 6th, Pueblo

 Everyone welcome – FREE to the public.
Donate a raffle item to defray chapter expenses

Carbondale man named to new state forest panel

 http://www.postindependent.com/article/20080213/VALLEYNEWS/98654861

Staff Report
Glenwood Springs, CO Colorado
February 13, 2008

CARBONDALE — Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter named Ken Neubecker, a Carbondale resident and vice president of Colorado Trout Unlimited, to a newly created state group called the Colorado Forest Health Advisory Council.

The multi-agency group will help “coordinate and lead efforts to address the mountain pine beetle epidemic” and other threats to forest lands in Colorado, according to a statement from the governor’s office.

“Colorado’s forests are vital to our environment, to our communities, to our economy and to our overall quality of life,” Ritter said in a prepared statement. “But our forests are at risk, and one of the biggest risks is the mountain pine beetle. This epidemic has decimated more than 1.5 million acres of mature lodge-pole pines over the past decade and could wipe them out in another three to five years.”

The council will develop a short-term action plan and will address many issues, including the implementation of priorities identified in community wildfire protection plans, methods to encourage establishment of forest improvement districts, and implementation of landscape-scale stewardship projects. The council will also establish long-term strategies for sustainable forest health that will address a “state-wide vision to protect communities from fire and restore forest health,” according to the governor’s statement.

The council will report back to the governor and the legislature annually. If recommendations require legislative action, those recommendations will be submitted by Oct. 1 prior to the January start of the legislative session, according to the statement.

Harris Sherman, executive director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, and Jeff Jahnke, state forester and director of the Colorado State Forest Service, will co-chair the council.

Roan a rare treasure

Denver Post guest commentary

Sharon Lance

A Denver Post editorial earlier this month on the Bureau of Land Management’s plan to lease and drill on the Roan Plateau missed the mark — perhaps most egregiously by claiming off-site development like that proposed by U.S. Reps. Mark Udall and John Salazar might actually be detrimental to the Roan’s wildlife.

The editorial states that “horizontal drilling operations could actually increase the risk of harm to the wildlife that use the base of the plateau for their winter range.” Folks, that ship has sailed. Much of the Roan’s “winter range” is already being drilled and is a network of industrial-grade roads pocked by graded well pads and frequented daily by 18-wheeled trucks that transport materials and manpower to any number of rigs and working wells.

Further destroying deer and elk habitat is not what the Salazar-Udall provision is about. Public lands in the Roan Plateau Planning Area cover 67,000 acres, just 1.5 percent of the entire Piceance Basin. The only habitat left to protect on the Roan is that small percentage of undisturbed backcountry on top of the plateau and the remaining deer and elk winter range at the base that sportsmen have identified as priceless. No gradual development plans put forth by the BLM — even those that require reclamation — would spare this important island in a sea of oil and gas development from the drill bit.

The Salazar-Udall provision would have protected habitat, not sacrificed it. What is needed is a moratorium on further leasing until a plan is in place that allows for continued, responsible development on the half of the Roan that is leased or owned by industry, while keeping the other half as it is today for tomorrow’s sportsmen.

Worries that Colorado’s treasury won’t get the most out of the Roan if industry can’t access all of the plateau’s buried gas are unfounded and quite honestly disingenuous. Much of the Roan’s gas could be accessed using directional drilling from land outside the planning area and from those lands that have already been trashed. The Salazar-Udall provision would have allowed for this. The long- term harm to local economies by sacrificing the entire plateau to drilling will far outweigh the initial windfall Colorado would see in gas royalties.

Communities like Rifle, Parachute and Meeker understand the long-term economic benefit of keeping at least some of northwestern Colorado’s fish and game habitat intact.

A 2006 study commissioned by the 2005 Energy Policy Act found that 90 percent of the public, BLM-managed land in the basin is already available for leasing. The notion that keeping drilling rigs, industrial-grade roads and razed well pads off of one tiny section of a huge natural gas field would hamstring the energy industry and the state’s treasury is simply laughable, and The Post’s editorial board should have checked its facts.

Drilling the top of the Roan would be an irrevocable mistake — one that would forever sacrifice trophy elk and deer habitat and hunting opportunity, and two genetically pure populations of rare Colorado River cutthroat trout that are of keen value to adventurous anglers.

What remains of the Roan is simply too valuable to sacrifice for short-term profit.

Sharon Lance (stlance@comcast.net) is past president of the Colorado Council of Trout Unlimited and member of the board of trustees.

Try fishing other side of Yucatán

http://origin.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_7755693

By Sam Bacon

Sam Bacon, a former Rio Grande guide, is a law student at the University of Colorado and an intern for the Trout Unlimited Colorado Water Project.

Special to The Denver Post

CAMPECHE, Mexico — The guides of Campeche were huddled on the pier in the predawn darkness, Pangas loaded with gas, drinks and lunches for a full day of scouting the west coast of the Yucatán Peninsula for baby tarpon.

After just 10 minutes at full throttle, head guide Neko Pastrana motioned with a flick of his hand to cut the motor. As the boat settled in the water, still dark beneath a purple sky, we jumped to our feet to see if we could discern what had caught his attention. The slick, black backs of a school of tarpon were visible a ways off, slicing through the dead-calm water.

My dad, Todd Bacon, grabbed an 8-weight and stripped out line onto the deck as quickly as he could. One long cast to check his distance and to recoil the line properly on the deck, and he was ready. Holding the fly in one hand and the rod in the other, he waited as Neko poled silently across 8-foot deep water to intercept the school.

“Cast!” came the command as we neared the school. The streamer landed short of the visible fish, but Neko exhorted, “Strip! Strip!”

Todd made quick, short strips until the line stopped abruptly, and he then sent a hard strip-strike the length of the line to set the hook. The stillness of that morning was broken by a 25-pound silver beauty arching its way 4 feet into the air and crashing back into the sea. Up again it came, and again and again, spending its energy going vertical into the Mexican dawn. After a 10-minute fight, the fish was released, and the morning was off to a heart-pounding start.

Regardless of how many tarpon one has boated, it is impossible to step up onto the casting platform in the early-morning light without an all-encompassing sense of nervous alertness. It’s a rush that is totally addicting. My dad and I had made this trip last year, and we wanted to feel that rush again.

Far off the tourist track Campeche, on the Gulf of Mexico side of the Yucatán Peninsula, is a full day’s journey from Denver, flying via Houston to Merida, then a two-hour drive. It is a bustling city of 400,000 people, with an old city center and a modern city built around it. In total contrast to Cancun on the opposite coast, Campeche is relatively untouched by “Yanqui” influence.In fact, this city is so far off the tourist track that hardly anyone speaks English. In place of the hotel strips of Cancun are the forts of San Miguel and San Jose, marking the town’s 500-year-old origins as the coast’s lone protection from pirates. Narrow streets are paved with cobbles borrowed from old city walls. Row houses and stores are painted in Mexican pastels of lime, yellow, azure, coral and peach. The Spanish colonial feel extends to the simple cafes and restaurants surrounding the center plaza and adjacent cathedral.

To fish for Campeche’s baby tarpon, we came equipped with three rod: two 8-weights and one 10. These babies — 8 to 40 pounds — are no different from their bigger relatives in the Keys, either in terms of feeding behavior or initial fight. Their sleek, black silhouettes often are visible from afar, sometimes too visible, as they allowed us so much time to get ready that our anxious casts fell off the mark. But a missed cast does not necessarily signal the end. Schools where only a few fish are visibly breaching the surface for air, known as greyhounding, often hold 40 or more fish just below the surface. Much of the time is spent slowly poling along the edge of the mangrove coast, searching for cruising pods of tarpon and blind-casting into likely pockets.

Casting to create chaos I can think of no more exciting moment in fishing than seeing a wake break from the course of the school to chase a quickly stripped fly. A violent strip-strike and the aerials begin. Campeche’s baby tarpon jump just like all tarpon, panicked and uncontrolled, yet majestic and explosive. Instead of mortgaging the next hour of the day hauling up a tired log of a fish from the bottom, however, the average fight is closer to 10 or 15 minutes.Shorter fights mean more time to experience what is perhaps the area’s best attribute: the diversity of fishing opportunities that it offers. While tarpon are the only target species, the days consist of probing either the offshore flats that are 7 to 10 feet deep and up to a mile off the shore line, the mangrove edges that stretch for endless miles north of town or the “rios.” The rios are brackish streams that drain the peninsula and hold powerful fish in some of the most surreal environments I’ve ever seen, in or out of fishing.

One afternoon, we grabbed mangrove branches to pull the boat through a gap in the vegetation. The passage opened onto a clearing no bigger than a boxing ring. A floor of golden sand betrayed four or five ‘poons that were languidly patrolling the recess.

With no time to free up line and no room to backcast anyway, I resorted to my favorite high-country stream technique: the bow-and-arrow cast. With an 8-weight. For a 15-pound fish. The ensuing fight was pure chaos, but what a unique and bizarre opportunity, available only in Campeche.

COLORADO STATE PROFESSOR EMERITUS BOB BEHNKE ENDOWS FELLOWSHIP FOR COLD-WATER FISHERIES RESEARCH

FORT COLLINS – One of the world’s foremost experts in cold-water fisheries, Colorado State University Professor Emeritus Robert Behnke, recently announced a gift to endow a fellowship for a CSU graduate student to study critical cold-water fisheries issues related to habitat, disease, native species and more.

The Robert J. Behnke Rocky Mountain Flycasters Research Fellowship stemmed from an annual scholarship that was created by Trout Unlimited, a national fisheries conservation organization, in honor of Behnke’s longtime Trout Unlimited chapter membership and his devotion to the study and appreciation of native trout and salmon.

“I was humbled and deeply touched by the fundraising of our local Trout Unlimited chapter in my honor,” said Behnke. “I decided to make this initial effort into a permanent endowment with my contribution. The endowment is designed to further the legacy of the CSU fisheries program as a national leader in fisheries research and conservation.”    

The $128,000 endowed fellowship gift will provide an opportunity for a Colorado State graduate student to study fisheries issues such as restoration of native greenback cutthroat trout in Colorado, impact of sedimentation on trout from run-off following forest fires and lessening the impact of whirling disease on rainbow trout. Fishing is a primary recreational activity in Colorado and studying issues that address the quality of cold-water fisheries will continue to improve the state’s fishing reputation and economy.

Behnke is widely recognized as the world’s foremost expert on North American trout and salmon species. He is the author of several books, including “About Trout: The Best of Robert J. Behnke from Trout Magazine,” and more than 100 scientific articles.

Healing Troubled Waters – TU Climate Change Report

TU’s climate change report, ” Healing Troubled Waters” was released yesterday. You can download a copy, read the FAQ and related links at: www.tu.org/climatechange.

Study: Climate change will endanger trout

http://www.jhguide.com/article.php?art_id=2500

By Cory Hatch December 6, 2007
A survey of scientific studies on climate change and fish shows that Western populations of trout could diminish by as much as 60 percent as water warms, bugs disappear and droughts become more prevalent.

The report, compiled by Trout Unlimited, looks at the effects of climate change on trout and salmon habitat across the country. The report also suggests ways to make habitat more resilient to threats associated with a predicted 2 to 10 degree global temperature increase during the next 100 years.

Jack Williams, chief scientist for Trout Unlimited, said trout and salmon are good indicators of ecosystem health because they require cold, clean water for spawning, egg survival and rearing of young.

“We’re already seeing the effects of climate change,” said Williams, who pointed out that mayflies, an important food source for trout, are starting to emerge at an earlier time of year. “We’ve got a lot of trout populations that are poised to lose about half of their range.”

In addition to warmer water and impacts on insects, Williams said, climate change could mean greater floods, reduced snowpack, earlier runoffs, more wildfires and increased insect infestations in forests, all of which can hurt trout populations.

Bob Gresswell, a research biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey’s Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center, studies cutthroat trout in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, including one project below Jackson Lake Dam. Gresswell says trout across the West are so susceptible to climate change because development and irrigation pressures have already pushed populations into more isolated, high-elevation streams.

Further, humans have introduced non-native fish such as rainbow trout, brook trout, lake trout and brown trout into cutthroat trout ecosystems, increasing the risk of hybridization and predation. Climate change could amplify the negative effects non-native fish have on trout, Gresswell said.

For instance, reproduction times for rainbow trout and cutthroat trout are somewhat isolated by the spring runoff. Cutthroat trout spawn just after the peak runoff and rainbow trout spawn just before. But with spring runoff coming earlier each year, Gresswell said, rainbow trout could eventually come to a point when they can’t spawn any earlier, and the chance of hybridization could increase.

Gresswell pointed to fish die-offs and fishing closures in Yellowstone and Montana as a probable sign that global warming is already affecting trout populations.

“I worked in the park for 17 years and we never closed the fishery even once [because of warm water],” he said.

Both Gresswell and Williams said that while it could be too late to stop climate change, it isn’t too late to make trout habitat more resilient to its effects.

“Let’s start working right now on things that we can do to our local stream systems to prepare for the kinds of impacts that we know are coming,” Williams said.

Restoration efforts include trying to reconnect larger low-elevation waterways to the smaller upper-elevation streams native trout now inhabit.

“That allows the fish to basically move around and find better habitat conditions,” Williams said.
Other ways to protect trout include removing old culverts, planting native trees and shrubs along streams to provide shade and protect stream banks, and placing logs and boulders in the stream to provide sections with deeper, cooler water.