by Scott Wagner | Feb 21, 2020 | Message from the President
Bright, sunny and 22 degrees. Much warmer than the previous two days. Randy Arnold and his merry band of volunteers are clearing an impassible stretch of the upper Kinnickinnic in St. Croix county. Fifteen volunteers showed up this morning, ten of which show up almost every Saturday morning. Four or five other volunteers show up whenever they can, and then there are always one or two new faces. I know my math doesn’t quite add up, but I can’t help it. I’m a banker. The volunteers include both men and women, young and old (I mean “more mature,” of course) and folks from all walks of life. Some drive less than five miles every Saturday to clear brush. Some drive more than 50 miles. Some are certified chainsaw operators. Some are certified in first aid. Some are certified in herbicide application. Pretty much all of them hate European buckthorn and the way this invasive species has turned our streambanks into impenetrable jungles. I’m pretty sure most of them aren’t very fond of box elder trees either and the way this native tree grows up and out of both sides of stream banks and then falls across the water, causing coldwater streams to meander and warm, thereby becoming uninhabitable for trout.
As it turns out there are many, many miles of coldwater trout streams in Polk, St. Croix and Pierce counties in Wisconsin, that have had habitat work done on them in the past and that hold trout, but that are just plain inaccessible because of these two aggressive plant species. Imagine that. We have some of the most productive spring creeks in the world right in our own backyard and we can’t get to them to fish!
That’s where Randy and his merry band of brush-clearing volunteers comes in. Nobody told them that it was an impossible task to clear the many miles of buckthorn and box elder jungles we have here. Or if they told them, they just didn’t listen. Instead, they put on their gloves and pick up their loppers on Saturday mornings, show up at a designated spot and start clearing brush together. Some cut trees and brush. Some cut up downed trees. Some drag brush to the fires. Some start the fires and keep them going. At the end of the morning, all gather around one of the fires to roast hot dogs, eat cookies, and take a look at what they’ve accomplished together. A new, formerly unfishable section of trout stream is now fishable again. What an accomplishment! Regardless of whether the volunteers were able to clear 100 feet or 500 feet in a given morning, they know they’ve made a positive difference. They know they’ve worked together with a group of like-minded individuals to help the environment, to help each other and to help people they don’t even know. One branch, one tree at a time, these volunteers have cleared miles and miles of coldwater stream banks over the years in our area. In their own quite way, they have made huge contributions to our coldwater ecology and trout fishing. And over the years, many of these volunteers have become lifelong friends.
No experience is necessary to join Randy Arnold’s merry band of brush-clearing volunteers. Just a warm pair of work gloves and a pair of boots. Email Randy at randyca999@ gmail.com if you would like to be added to his volunteer workday email list.
Happy Fishing! —Scott Wagner
by Scott Wagner | Jan 22, 2020 | Message from the President
There’s something comforting about watching birds come to a bird feeder on a cold, snowy winter’s day. Several house finches have taken up permanent residence on one side of the bird feeder, while an equal number of slate-colored juncos are pecking the ground beneath it. A red-bellied woodpecker grasps the edge of feeder, opposite the finches. His body hangs off the edge with only his head above it to grab a sunflower seed. Black-capped chickadees (they’re my favorite) flit back and forth, taking seeds and eating them in their perches amongst nearby bushes and trees. An occasional white-breasted nuthatch or downy woodpecker ventures onto the feeder, opposite the finches who continue to eat seeds and rebuff a female cardinal that then waits in a nearby bush for her turn. The juncos patiently keep looking for seeds in the snow below. Medium-sized fluffy snowflakes gently float down from the sky amidst a backdrop of grey branches and the grayish green leaves of cedar trees. All is at peace. Suddenly, a grey squirrel runs past, no doubt being chased by something. Two noisy, raucous blue jays swoop in from behind the squirrel and swerve towards the feeder; birds feeding there scatter in all directions. The jays sound out their loud, wintry dominance before starting to consume seeds. The peace of the snowy winter’s day has been temporarily broken by the blue jays’ noisy, aggressive presence. Or has it? Blue jays used to really bother me. When I was a kid and out grouse hunting with my father, blue jays’ noisy warnings seemed to worsen our hunting. I guess I really don’t know if grouse listened to the warnings and said something like, “Hmm, a man with a brown coat, carrying a Remington 12 gauge and a kid with a pea shooter just entered the woods after sneaking across old man McCarthy’s pasture. That kid could be dangerous. We had better clear out, Mable.” I can’t say for certain what goes through the brain of a ruffed grouse, or how they process a blue jay’s warning call, but the grouse seemed to listen because we often saw fewer of them after the blue jays had sounded their alarm. So, even though the kid with the pea shooter didn’t appreciate the fact that the blue jays appeared to be warning the grouse, the adult he grew into did and had to begrudgingly admit that the blue jays’ warnings were beneficial to the grouse he was seeking.
(A sharpie—sharp-shinned hawk—just shot through our yard at about head level and landed in the lower branches of a nearby tree. In less than two seconds every other living thing in our yard, including the squirrels, vanished. Talk about breaking the peace of a snowy winter’s day!)
What are the warning sounds that we hear in our lives and how should we respond to them? The threat of global warming is one that has certainly been sounded, but it’s a challenging one for me to get my arms around. If you listen to the people in one camp, it’s all doom and gloom. We’re about to experience the greatest mass extinction of species the world has ever seen, which is ultimately going to result in our own extinction. It might already be too late to change the effects of global warming, and only the most drastic of measures, applied across the globe, can prevent a disaster of enormous proportions. If you listen to the people in the other camp, global warming has been slowly taking place for centuries and is part of the normal warming and cooling cycle of our planet. Yes, we should do whatever we can to minimize our impact on global warming, but the scientific community is overreacting and life as we know it is certainly not going to end. As seems to be happening more often in our society, both sides have turned their positions into almost religious belief systems, thereby allowing each side to infallibly pronounce their beliefs as being the correct ones and, at the same time, infallibly pronounce contradictory beliefs and people who believe in them to be somehow bad and therefore worthy of condemnation. The end effect of this approach is that both sides end up not respecting each other, not listening to each other, in some cases hating each other, and ultimately doing nothing constructive about something that should be vitally important to all of us.
I’m a banker. I’m not a scientist, politician, farmer, or captain of industry. In fact, when it comes to global warming, I can freely admit that I’m not the brightest bulb on the tree. But I’m bright enough to know that an alarm has been sounded and that unless we all start respecting each other and truly listening to each other’s points of views, we’re not going to be able to respond as thoughtfully or as well to this alarm, as the ruffed grouse responded to the blue jays’ warnings when I was a kid.
Happy Fishing! —Scott Wagner
by Scott Wagner | Dec 27, 2019 | Message from the President
“We don’t have funding for that anymore. We used to do more of that when we had more resources. We would really like to do that someday, but we’ll have to wait until we have more funding.”
This isn’t going to be a sermon about money. It’s going to be more of a reality check followed by a pleasant observation. Kiap-TU-Wish has been blessed with generous donors who spend money at our annual banquet and give freely to our spring appeal each year. Due to their/your generosity, we have funding to pay for eight Trout-in-the-Classroom programs in area schools, to send several youth to Trout Camp each summer, and to help the WIDNR with summer mowing costs along our streams and rivers. We also have funding to monitor the water quality and temperatures of our streams and to buy more rock to strengthen the habitat restoration projects that the WIDNR trout crew works on in our area. We have this funding because of your generosity. Thank you.
The statements at the beginning of this month’s Drift aren’t statements we hear from our chapter members. However, they are the kind of statements we are likely to hear more often from natural resource managers as time goes on. Let’s face it. We live in a fiscally conservative state with (according to the demographers) a stable, but aging population. Aging populations tend to pay less income taxes as more workers retire than enter the workforce. Unless our population suddenly increases, lower income tax collections mean that all of our statefunded agencies, like our WIDNR, are going to receive less funding and are going to be more stretched in the years ahead. They’re going to have to do more with less. Sometimes, they’re just going to have to do less. Our top-notch fisheries biologists and trout crew want to do the right thing in managing our natural resources. However, over time, they might be prevented from managing our resources in the way they want to, due to lack of resources.
So, what’s the answer?
I believe that we’re the answer! Or at least, that we’re moving in the direction of being the answer!
I believe that many of our Kiap-TU-Wish members are already helping plug gaps left by reorganizations and funding cuts. Think of the partnerships our members have built with area schools in the Trout-in-the-Classroom programs we sponsor, not to mention all the Kiap volunteers who staff the Bugs-in-the-Classroom sessions and Trout Release Days. Think of the water quality and temperature data that Kiap members faithfully collect throughout the year and share with the WIDNR. Think of hours spent with WIDNR staff planning future habitat restoration project sites and putting ongoing maintenance plans together for already restored sites. Then, think of the thousands of hours Kiap members spend each winter clearing those new project sites and maintaining existing sites. And, if that isn’t enough, Kiap members spend hundreds of hours behind the scenes each year advocating for stormwater retention ponds, sound agricultural practices and dam removals that benefit and protect our coldwater resources.
We are the answer because citizen volunteers like you and me are the people who are in the best position to plug funding gaps, simply by volunteering in places where we can make a difference. In particular, Kiap-TU-Wish volunteers are already making a substantial difference in the heath of our local coldwater streams and riparian corridors. And we’ll have the opportunity to make more of a difference as time goes on. In fact, something tells me that Randy, Loren, Pete and their merry winter brushing crew will offer us plenty of opportunities to get outside, get some fresh air and have fun making a difference over this winter. Come out and join the fun for a time or two, or volunteer with the Trout-in-the-Classroom programs, or with the chapter’s new Veteran Services Partnership. Wherever you fit in, volunteer and make a difference!
Happy Fishing! Scott
by Scott Wagner | Nov 20, 2019 | Message from the President
Reader Alert! My mind is “drifting” all over the place as I attempt to write the Drift this evening. A damp, grey weekend, being in between book club books, and not fishing for over a month (!) have all combined to produce a writing state I am calling “Uninspired.” So, I went to my fishing journal to find Inspiration.
Before you start dreaming of a pristine, well-organized, faithfully-kept fishing journal, tastefully decorated with artsy sketches of streamside flora and fauna, let me introduce you to my fishing journal. I started it in 2012 to record water temperatures, weather conditions, numbers of fish caught, flies that caught said numbers of fish, and other notes that I felt would be appropriate for an aspiring fly angler. Things didn’t end up quite where they began. I quickly discovered that recording water temperatures and weather conditions were a lot easier than catching trout. Instead of catching trout, I recorded things like how many flies I lost, or how much tippet I had gone through. It was probably a good thing that early on I had decided my journal would record facts and not feelings. Otherwise, the feelings expressed in my first few years of fly angling would have needed an expanded version of the English language, and probably would have caused a Marine Corps Drill Sergeant to blush. Instead of catching fish, I recorded the different spring wild flowers I had seen and the variety of migrating warblers I had encountered. One time, I waded underneath a willow bush that overhung a stream I was fishing in and watched a whole flock of warblers work their way through the bushes upstream. The warblers went right through the bush I was hiding under! I noticed that raccoons, deer and foxes didn’t seem as scared of me when I was in the middle of the stream, half submerged in my waders. I wanted to record caught fish in my journal so badly, that I started recording refusals and misses with as much rigor and detail as I would have recorded caught fish had I caught them.
Then I started meeting people on the stream. Trout anglers, of all types, and some of the nicest people I had met anywhere. They were from all walks of life, all ages, occupations and, I’m sure, of all political parties and religious beliefs. The one thing they all had in common was a great love, almost a reverence, for the outdoors and the streams they fished. They noticed the spring wildflowers and migrating warblers, too. They lost flies in trees and bushes, too. They didn’t all catch fish every time they went out and the word “skunked” appeared in their journals, too. (Maybe just not as often as it appeared in mine.) They didn’t have it all figured out, but they loved the outdoors, they loved angling for trout, and they made it OK for me to be out there losing flies, counting refusals, trying to figure out how on earth to catch fish, because that was exactly what they were doing, too.
These people didn’t just make me feel OK with where I was at in my angling journey; they enriched my life. They have become acquaintances, mentors and fellow conservation volunteers. A few have become close friends —which brings my “drifting” to a happy end.
This Thanksgiving, one of the things I am most grateful for is all of the farmers, land owners, conservation volunteers, trout anglers and just plain nice people, who have become a part of my life through fly angling. Thank you. Thank you all. — Scott Wagner
by Scott Wagner | Oct 23, 2019 | Message from the President
Sixty-six percent. Two thirds. Two out of every three. No matter how you say it, that’s a big number. It seems like an even bigger number if you love fishing for Brook Trout and your local fisheries biologist just told you that 66.5% of Wisconsin’s Brook Trout habitat is estimated to be lost in the next 35-45 years. This was part of WIDNR biologist, Kasey Yallaly’s, message to us at Kiap-TU-Wish’s October chapter meeting at Junior’s Restaurant & Tap House in River Falls, WI. Wisconsin is currently blessed with 18,615 miles of Brook Trout streams spread throughout the state. Within the next 35-45 years, the WIDNR is estimating that 12,375 miles of these streams will no longer be able to support Brook Trout, leaving only 6,240 miles of Brook Trout streams in the state. That means we are projected to lose two out of every three miles of currently available Brook Trout water within a generation. Even if you don’t love Brook Trout fishing, losing two thirds of our state’s Brook Trout water in such a short period of time should cause us to pause and think.
The first thing I thought was that the WIDNR was overreacting and blowing this whole “climate change” thing out of proportion. We’ve all heard it all before. Sometimes I think we’re all a bunch of Chicken Littles. Every generation seems to believe the sky is falling and finds some cause to rally their troops around, so they can stand up or sit in or march to prove that all the other generations need to wake up and take action now, or we’re all going to die. I know this sounds bad, but that is what I thought. Maybe I had a bad day at work, or maybe I had just taken a private lesson in how to be a good curmudgeon from Mike Alwin. But that is pretty close to what I thought.
So, I went home and dug into the study from which Kasey Yallaly was quoting. The study was run by the WIDNR Brook Trout Reserve Team, which was initiated in 2015 to study Wisconsin’s current Brook Trout habitat and how this habitat would likely stand up to changes in groundwater, forestation, stream temperatures and other factors in the coming years. One of this team’s goals was to identify the places temperature sensitive Brook Trout would be most likely to survive and then attempt to conserve, or fortify these places, to make them more resilient for Brook Trout. The name this team chose for these thermally resilient places was “Brook Trout Reserves,” but more on that later. My current goal was to dig into the study to prove that the climate change alarmists were overreacting. Unfortunately, when I dug into the team’s methodology, my male ego took a bit of a hit. Even though I didn’t understand much of the scientific nomenclature, I did come to understand that the team took quite a number of local, national and international climate and groundwater temperature models into account and averaged them together to take out the peaks and valleys in their model. I had to admit, their methodology seemed, I hate to say it, reasonable. Groundwater temperatures and temperatures in our trout streams really are rising throughout the state. Even if these temperatures rise a little slower than the team’s estimates, many of our favorite Brook Trout streams are now, or will soon be, approaching the thermal limit for Brook Trout, beyond which Brook Trout can’t breath; they suffocate. The sky might not be completely falling, but this is serious business.
Now back to the rest of Kasey Yallaly’s excellent presentation. Kasey went on to tell us that the Brook Trout Reserve Team had identified 54 Brook Trout Reserves throughout Wisconsin. These were streams that had a combination of several attributes, including strong groundwater inflows, strong Brook Trout genetics, proximity to natural habitat and stream buffers, connectivity of streams to allow for free movement of fish up and down streams, clusters of Brook Trout streams that could replenish each other, amount of streams protected by public ownership or conservation easements, along with several other factors. Kasey shared that going forward, the WIDNR would be prioritizing its conservation easement purchases, its stream habitat work, and its selective stocking of highly resilient native Brook Trout with the goal of enhancing and strengthening these 54 Brook Trout Reserves both now and into the future.
Kasey shared quite a bit about what the WIDNR is going to do to fortify our state’s Brook Trout habitat into the future. Given the WIDNR’s estimate of Wisconsin losing 12,375 miles of Brook Trout streams in the next 35-45 years, my question is: What are we as a chapter going to do to prevent as much of this loss as possible? What are we as members of other organizations, as groups of friends and as individuals going to do to lessen this massive Brook Trout habitat loss and fortify our state’s 54 Brook Trout Reserves both now and into the future? What am I going to do?
Happy (and thoughtful) Fishing. —Scott Wagner
