River Explorers continue their journey

Colorado Trout Unlimited is happy to say that the River Explorers program at the Mapleton School District in Thornton will be continuing into its second school year. This will be the beginning of the program’s vertical alignment in which students have different experiences in sequential years centered around healthy watersheds, in this case the South Platte, and fishing. We will also be bringing the program to the Adams-12 district for its first year in that district. As the years go by, we hope that this approach will be an ongoing success showing the value of consistent and stepwise programming to outdoor education. Students who are “River Explorers” will see four years of new activities. One step on the path is Trout in the Classroom. State-wide this year, Colorado Trout Unlimited and its chapters are sponsoring eleven tanks in which students raise trout from eggs to be released into the wild when they grow large enough in the spring. All classrooms have now received their eggs, and many have actively swimming and feeding fry.

River Watch is another piece of the River Explorers curriculum. As its own nonprofit, River Watch utilizes citizen science through school groups and volunteer organizations to collect and formulate water quality data from across the state. Colorado Trout Unlimited works with River Watch to host a few sites through partnering schools and local chapters. As a part of the River Explorers, students will become intimately familiar with the local water quality on the South Platte, and through River Watch provide that data to the public for anyone to use. This real world applicability is something CTU is proud to bring to the South Platte River Explorers, and we think the addition of two new monitoring sites is an exciting undertaking.

Rounding out the River Explorers experience are two more years of programming:  Stream Explorers, the introductory portion hosted at the middle school level, in which students learn the basics of a watershed, stream ecology, and fishing; and National Fishing in Schools Program where they hone their fly fishing skills. Connecting all of these pieces together we hope will foster students’ love of the outdoors, of fishing, and ultimately the desire to protect the places and resources they connect with. With generous support from local sponsors, Colorado Trout Unlimited is thrilled to be educating the next generation of river stewards through the continuation of River Explorers in the Mapleton School District, and the expansion to Adams-12 district.

LAST CHANCE to register for the New Leaders Training!!

In Colorado there are 24 local Trout Unlimited chapters that are an essential piece to Trout Unlimted's mission of conserving cold water fisheries. Every chapter has its own leadership board, programs, dedicated volunteers and most of the time they raise their own money for operations. Running a chapter is extremely rewarding, but it can also be challenging. To help Colorado chapters be most effective, Colorado Trout Unlimited hosts an annual New Leaders Training for chapter leaders. Training is October 18th and 19th in Grand Junction!!

This training is for both new and old chapter leaders who are eager to learn how to be more effective leaders and build stronger chapters. The New Leaders Training Weekend will have numerous trainings, networking opportunities, and each attendee will walk away with resources to help their chapter reach its full potential. The Colorado Trout Unlimited Council's Fall board meeting is also held this same weekend in between training sessions. All participants are encouraged to attend the board meeting to become more familiar with the council and what their responsibilities are in Colorado.

Registration for the full weekend is $70.00; however to show our appreciation for new participants all first time attendees get their registration fees waived. To show our appreciation even more, this year Colorado Trout Unlimited is also providing a $100 scholarship for the first 10 chapters to have a first time leader attend to help with travel expenses.

Please contact Stephanie Scott (sscott@tu.org) or 720-354-2647 to apply for one of the scholarships or for general questions about the training.

Follow this link to see the agenda and register for the New Leaders Training: Register Here

Registration Deadline is October 13, 2014.

2014 Camp Essay Contest -- Honorable Mention: Abby

Abby's home river is The Poudre, right here in Colorado.  Her essay highlights her experience at the TU Youth Camp this year.  Great job Abby!!  See you on the water...

West Denver Chapter cleans up Clear Creek

September 27^th saw several miles of Clear Creek Canyon made beautiful again, thanks to many volunteers organized through The West Denver Chapter. The effort brought help from Colorado Women Flyfishers, and youth from Achieve Academy of Mapleton School District.  These 6^th & 7^th graders got down and dirty as part of their involvement with the South Platte River Explorers Program.  This clean-up was the inaugural activity in a series of educational experiences centering on watershed science and fishing!  Volunteers gathered at Mountain Tool and Feed in Idaho Springs, who generously offered their site for parking, and a BBQ lunch following the clean-up. The West Denver Chapter does a great job organizing this clean-up annually in the fall.   Thanks to its proximity to the Front-Range, Clear Creek is second in the state for recreational users, including anglers, rafters, and kayakers.

For more information on Youth Education Programs, contact Garrett Hanks ghanks@TU.org

CTU New Leaders Training Registration is Now Open!!

In Colorado there are 24 local Trout Unlimited chapters that are an essential piece to Trout Unlimted's mission of conserving cold water fisheries. Every chapter has its own leadership board, programs, dedicated volunteers and most of the time they raise their own money for operations. Running a chapter is extremely rewarding, but it can also be challenging. To help Colorado chapters be most effective, Colorado Trout Unlimited hosts an annual New Leaders Training for chapter leaders. This training is for both new and old chapter leaders who are eager to learn how to be more effective leaders and build stronger chapters. The New Leaders Training Weekend will have numerous trainings, networking opportunities, and each attendee will walk away with resources to help their chapter reach its full potential. The Colorado Trout Unlimited Council's Fall board meeting is also held this same weekend in between training sessions. All participants are encouraged to attend the board meeting to become more familiar with the council and what their responsibilities are in Colorado.

Registration for the full weekend is $70.00; however to show our appreciation for new participants all first time attendees get their registration fees waived. To show our appreciation even more, this year Colorado Trout Unlimited is also providing a $100 scholarship for the first 10 chapters to have a first time leader attend to help with travel expenses.

Please contact Stephanie Scott (sscott@tu.org) or 720-354-2647 to apply for one of the scholarships or for general questions about the training.

Follow this link to register for the New Leaders Training: Register Here

Registration Deadline is October 13, 2014.

Outdoor Mentors - connecting kids with the outdoors

Young people today experience the world in a very different way than a generation previous. Time once spent exploring neighborhood fields, splashing in the creek down the street, and strolling through a nearby forest has been replaced by time spent navigating online worlds, diving into the latest season on Netflix, and scrolling through Facebook. Friendships and adventures now are built out of online interactions rather than shared journeys in nature. The people who care about and protect our fisheries and watersheds came to care about them by spending time in them with other people who also cared. If youth lose their connection to the outdoors, it has repercussions for our tomorrows which cannot be ignored even in our successes of today. Be it through a family member or a friend, it is likely somebody else introduced you to the magic of the natural world. That connection usually won’t come as a single moment of insight but rather as an ongoing path, eventually leading to the love of the places you have been and the desire to protect those places. Imagine what your life might be like had you not had such experiences. Colorado Trout Unlimited has developed a program to reach youth who otherwise might not have those experiences, and giving them the chance to fall in love with Colorado’s outdoors, fish, and rivers.

Outdoor Mentors is a coalition of conservation organizations, state agencies, youth development organizations, and other key outdoor recreation stakeholders coordinating their efforts to expand opportunities for disadvantaged youth to participate in outdoor recreation and learn the importance of our conservation heritage. Based on a successful model from Kansas, Outdoor Mentors in Colorado now involves multiple youth mentoring groups, from Big Brothers Big Sisters to Denver Kids Inc. With two large festivals held annually, as well as individual programs offered by sportsmen’s groups, Outdoor Mentors continues to get kids outside. Colorado TU’s participation includes fishing days, science camps, fly fishing day trips, and overnight outings.

On August 16, the coalition held its Outdoor Mentors Festival at Barr Lake State Park, drawing participants both from mentoring organizations and individual families. The event featured the brand new archery range at the Park. As hosts for the festival, and by providing a central point for sportsmen’s groups to coordinate efforts, Colorado Parks and Wildlife has been a leader in the ongoing success of Outdoor Mentors. At Barr Lake, kids and their mentors had the chance to try archery, birding, flycasting, fishing, geocaching, and target shooting.  The Park and the festival provided a great opportunity to showcase the fantastic outdoor resources on our public lands.

Fly fishing is just one way for kids to experience the outdoors. Colorado Trout Unlimited is hopeful that Outdoor Mentors will be the vehicle for many youth to find a new hobby or passion in our state’s wild places. Whatever it may be which interests a youth in your life, I encourage you to be a mentor in your own way. If you care about the amazing places in which you fish, hunt, and recreate, there is no better way to care for them than to pass on your passion.

For more information on the Outdoor Mentors Collaborative, to become a partner, or to volunteer as a mentor, please contact Garrett Hanks at ghanks@tu.org.

Fish On with the Greenbacks and Big Brothers Big Sisters

What is better than hearing the excitement in a child’s voice when they have hooked into their very first fish or chased down a grasshopper and finally caught it? That excitement and enthusiasm was exactly what we experienced these past couple weekends in the annual Greenbacks and Big Brothers Big Sisters fishing and river exploration events. The event consisted of a two part session on consecutive Saturdays. The first session was held at Reynolds Landing in Littleton where the kids had the opportunity to learn about several different aspects of fishing, ecology, and entomology. We started off the day learning about the differences between spin fishing and flyfishing. After a quick lesson in the technique of fly-fishing the kids had the opportunity to practice their casting skills!  Once these skills were honed, we moved onto bugs! What kid doesn’t like bugs? The kids were given the opportunity to observe and identify the aquatic insects that live in the South Platte, conduct some experiments to understand the impacts of temperature and light, and then tie some flies that imitated the insects that they previously identified. The day ended with the kids chasing and catching grasshoppers, which were used in their bottle ecology experiments. The day was a huge  success, and all of the kids were anxious for the following weekend where they would be given the opportunity to apply everything they learned.

The second session of this event consisted of fishing.The weather was perfect on Saturday when approximately 15 matches arrived at Lake Lehow, a Colorado Parks and Wildlife area. The energy and excitement in the air was buzzing and everyone was anxious to get on the water. These kids, and their mentors, came out to build some new relationships, get a little dirty, and try their hand at catching some fish!  After a safety briefing and a discussion about the practice of catch and release we were off.  It wasn’t soon after that we had lines in the water that you heard squeals of excitement “FISH ON”!!!  Fishing that day was absolutely amazing. We’re pretty sure every kid caugh at least one or maybe five fish. With the help of CPW and The Greenbacks volunteers, we were able to share our love of the outdoors and fishing knowledge to the next generation of anglers!

Be sure to visit our website for more information and sign up for our newsletter. http://thegreenbacks.org

9th Annual Youth Camp a huge success!

The 9th Annual Colorado Trout Unlimited Youth Fly Fishing and River Conservation camp was held near Stonewall, Colorado the week of June 9th. During the duration teenagers age 14 through 17 participated in activities and talks on conservation topics such as water quality, entomology, fish pathology, water law, and riparian restoration. Between learning about the work TU does, the students were instructed on casting, proper fish handling, and fly tying. Trips to local waterways happened at least once a day, and in their free time students were able to fish near camp. 2014 was the first year holding the camp in the southern part of the state. The Purgatoire River Anglers Chapter was a great help in organizing accommodations and suggesting fishing trips. A day was spent touring the recent restoration project on the Purgatoire River the chapter has been so involved in over the past few years. Students were even able to take part in the restoration by helping to seed in some of the floodplain disturbed during construction.

Kids came from far and wide to attend camp this year, from as far away as Steamboat Springs and New Mexico, and some from down the road in Trinidad. The camp’s ongoing success was apparent in the recruitment of this year’s class, and the participation of the five alumni counselors.

Phil Long Toyota of Trinidad provided financial support for the 2014 camp. With their generous contribution the campers were all able to attend on scholarships. It also afforded the opportunity for the students to document their experience with the use of video equipment. The shots from the week are to be edited and produced into a highlight reel for campers to remember their trip, and for recruiting next year’s class of attendees.

Of course none of this would be possible without volunteer support. Camp director Mike Nicholson has been with the youth camp almost as long as Larry Quilling and Sharon Lance who founded the project nine years ago. In that time the camp has grown its reputation as well as a contingent of passionate alumni. This year five camp alumni volunteered their time to return as youth counselors. With the additional help of returning and first time adult counselors, the campers had plenty of one on one attention and guidance throughout the week.

The best part of camp is seeing the students’ progress over the course of the camp, and being witness to their hard work paying off. We can all share in the enthusiasm of a kid catching their first fish on a fly rod, or in fooling a fish on a fly they tied. But even better than that is hearing how passionate they are about clean water, and rivers, and healthy wild fish. Knowing that they will be the ones to take the reins in the stewardship of these resources in the not too distant future, that is the reason why all the hard work we do today is worth it.

Evergreen Trout Unlimited is Helping Sponsor Outdoors Day

Evergreen Trout Unlimited is taking a year off of their Annual Fourth of July event and in return they are partnering with Colorado Parks and Wildlife for the Evergreen Outdoor Skills Day on Sunday, June 29. The event will take place at Evergreen Lake Park from 9am to 2pm. Kids of all ages and skill levels can partake in fly and spin cast fishing, guided nature walks and with help from Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, kids can learn more about hunters safety.

A free lunch and other great prizes will be awarded throughout the day.

In a press release provided by Colorado Parks and Wildlife, Joe Nicholson, wildlife officer for the Evergreen area said, "We'd like to see every family have the opportunity to experience some of the wildlife-related recreation that goes on in Colorado to maintain our populations and the health of our wildlife. Learning about the wildlife nearby and understanding our heritage is critical to the future of this precious natural resource."

Evergreen Trout Unlimited is providing volunteers to help with the fly tying activities, help kids practice both their fly and spin casting technique, how to properly catch and handle a fish, and how to bait the hooks.

If you are interested in volunteering with Evergreen Trout Unlimited for the event, contact John Ellis at jellis@enbColorado.com. For more information regarding attending the event, please RSVP at http://www.register-ed.com/programs/colorado/118-colorado-outreach.

Colorado High School Teacher Wins National Conservation Award

Thanks to his conservation efforts and environmental teaching within the program of Trout in the Classroom, local Summit High School teacher, Jamie Lambrecht is the newest winner of the 2014 Presidential Innovation Award for Environmental Educators (PIAEE). The PIAEE is awarded to 16 different teachers across the country each year. These teachers have dedicated their time and curriculum to teaching their students about the importance of environmental conservation. According the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the award is given to teachers, “to nationally honor, support and encourage educators who incorporate environmental education in their classrooms & teaching methods.”

For Lambrecht, winning the award is an honor; but he is most happy with the recognition the award represents. According to Lambrecht, the award shows that, “people are starting to realize the efforts that go into watersheds and conservation.” This is the reason behind his involvement with the Trout in the Classroom program (TIC).

Lambrecht has been involved with the TIC program for the last three years. With a biology degree under his belt, he felt very drawn to the program when it was being offered by Gore Range Trout Unlimited. “I wanted a way for kids to get more involved with some more hands on research,” he said.

The program reaches about 150-200 kids between the ages of 14 and 18 at Summit High School in Summit County, Colorado. “The program is an elective class, [as an extension of the biology department] therefore students have to sign up and want to take it,” said Lambrecht.

His curriculum involves more than growing fish in tanks; it helps students learn all about the aquatic ecosystem. Students learn about the insects in the water, the affects of pH and nitrate towards water quality, and other ways to help improve the river habitat. The kids also learn how these different traits affect fishing. Lambrecht says, “The kids leave the class ready to fish.”

In the future Lambrecht and Gore Range TU are going to continue with the Trout in the Classroom program as well as other conservation projects that will help kids get more involved with watershed conservation.

For more information on the Trout in the Classroom program, check out the article on the Stream Explorers Program.