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| Recap of 2024 WDNR Trout Habitat Projects by Nate Anderson I want to give a quick recap of what trout habitat projects took place in 2024 and share the field season plans for 2025. I will be giving a full description of each project along with photos at the Kiap-TU-Wish chapter meeting on May 6th. The Eau Claire habitat crew started the year working at Parker Creek, which was the second and final year of the project. This site is in St. Croix County just northeast of River Falls downstream of Pleasant Ave. We started the season off on May 8th, had 8 rain days while there and finished on July 1st. We were able to complete 8,392 feet of integrated bank treatment while using 7,000 tons of rock. We installed 78 root wads, 3 ERO structures, 13 spawning riffles, 13 rock clusters, 7 rock v-weirs, 3 islands, 19 overwintering deep-water pools, and 4 backwater refuges. Total cost was $172,851.93 or $51 per stream foot. The second project for us was the Plum Creek-Martin easement. This project is south of Plum City along Highway U. The goals of this project were to increase and protect the amount of instream habitat available to trout and thereby increase the number of trout within the project area and increase fishing access and fishability for anglers. Total project length was 2,680 feet of both banks and 911 feet of one bank. We installed 77 root wads, 5 rock V weirs, 1 double ERO, 6 spawning riffles, 3 backwater refuge, 10 mid-stream boulder cluster, 1 island. Total cost was $95,483 or $15.22 per foot. We also installed a new parking lot along HWY U for anglers to be able to park in a safe spot while fishing. Our final habitat project was on the Kinni-Moody easement which is upstream from East Division Street (HWY M) This project is a highly visible and very accessible project due to the location right in the town of River Falls. Access for fishing is from Hwy M bridge. We started August 26th and ended September 24th. This was a very tight location with my crew only working on one side. We used a lot of rock to protect the high bank next to the house. This bank was steeper than we would have liked but were limited on what we could do. There are still a lot of nice Cottonwoods, Bur Oaks and Black Walnuts on site which will make this a very nice-looking project soon. On the upper section of this site, we just added rock to the inside of the bank because the stream was overly wide, and this allowed us to save a lot of nice Black Walnut trees. We spent a lot of time in the track truck making the long hauls but were able to save the trees. We completed 2,700 feet of streambank protection and installed 28 root wads, 1 log spur, 4 spawning riffles, 6 deep pools for overwintering habitat, 5 rock deflectors. Total streambank rocked was 2,685 feet. Total rock used was 4,331 tons or 1.6 tons per foot. Total cost was $151,000 or $56 per foot. Total stream length for 2024 was 8,786 feet (1.66 miles) for a cost of $412,408. We were able to do some upland work on South Fork Kinni Fee Title Property. Correct size rock for making ERO’s were delivered to the site this winter, at a cost of $8,200 which KIAP paid for. (Thank You!) 4 Control spraying was applied in the fall to help eliminate unwanted woody vegetation. The total cost to spray the site was $8,054. Pheasant Forever paid $5,000 for the spraying and Kiap paid the remaining balance. Kiap donated $5,000 for equipment use so Josh and Nick spent 68 excavator hours in October and November removing large trees that were too large to spray. Total cost for equipment of was $11,818.57 with $6,818.57 coming from Trout Stamp funds. Our 2025 field season will consist of: Wilson Creek-Manwarren project Wilson Creek is in Dunn County and just north of Knapp. This is a NRCS partnering project to take an existing ditched section of the North Branch of Wilson Creek and put it back to somewhat the original channel. We were able to work a couple days in October to remove trees and knock down reed canary grass in hopes the site will freeze better. This site is very wet so we wanted to be able to try and work while the ground was frozen. We were able to create the new channel and fill in the old ditch section with the fill from the new channel. This summer, we will add habitat features such as root wads and double wing deflectors. We will do this project during a dry spell this summer and it should take us about a month and a half to finish everything we need to complete. Plum Creek-Von Holtum 2025 This site is in Pierce County south of Plum City on the upper Von Holtum easement. This project will take place upstream of our project last year and the project consist of 4,400 feet of stream length to be completed. The crew removed trees this winter and hauled 7,500 tons of shot rock at a cost of $8.95/ton for a total cost of $67,125. This will be our first project of the year starting sometime the first week of May. It should take us about 2 months to complete. South Fork Kinni ERO building/ 1 week of Feconn work It was recommended to burn the South Fork of the Kinni property this spring for best management practices on reducing woody vegetation but not having that as a viable option for many reasons, WDNR will borrow a state skid steer with a Feconn head attachment and spend a week of mowing. The Feconn is like a large brush hog that will mulch all vegetation flush with the ground. Any resprout of woody vegetation will be sprayed by 4-Control in the fall. This should give us the advantage of getting the woody vegetation under control. North Branch Wilson Creek Stoll Easement If time allows this summer, we will start another project on the North Branch of Wilson Creek. This site is an old pasture and is being overtaken by reed canary and tag alders. This section is 1,800 feet of stream length, have good access and help take angler pressure from Wilson and Gilbert creeks. This will be a more typical project with rocking the banks and adding instream habitat for all size structures for trout. |
Recap of 2024 Trout Habitat Projects
