Robins, pussy willows, bloodroot, blooming round-lobed hepatica, drumming yellowbellied sapsuckers, fresh-cut alfalfa, dandelions, screaming—oweeEEEK!—wood ducks , busy chipmunks and gobbling turkeys. All sights, sounds and a few familiar smells of spring, and all signs of hope in the world after a long, grey winter and what seems like years of dealing with coronavirus. Spring is here and happening in our very midst! But first, here are a few important items since our last in-person chapter meeting.
Board Elections: Since we had to cancel our April Chapter Meeting (which serves as our annual business meeting) we weren’t able to have board elections. This year, we had two board members (Perry Palin and Maria Manion) who completed their board terms and two chapter members (Dustin Wing and Scot Stewart) who were nominated for three-year terms. Our chapter bylaws allow the board to appoint new board members to fill spots that are vacated between annual business meetings, and given these circumstances, the Kiap-TU-Wish board elected Dustin Wing and Scot Stewart to serve one-year terms. This will fill the vacant board seats for now and give chapter members the opportunity to vote on extending the terms for these candidates at the first available opportunity, which will be next year’s Annual Business Meeting. Welcome to the Board, Dustin and Scot!
Departing Board Members: New board members joining also means prior board members leaving. This is always a bittersweet occurrence for me after having worked, played and gotten to know departing board members over the previous three to six years. We’re a pretty close board. We meet every month and members communicate frequently between board meetings. Sure, we don’t agree about everything and occasionally have long, spirited discussions, but we all share a common love for our coldwater resources and normally, with the support of and input from chapter members like yourself, we come to a consensus on most things. Departing board members this year are Maria Manion (who was RipRap’s editor and wrote grants for the Kinni’s Red Cabin project) and Perry Palin (who served as our Polk County outreach coordinator and seat of wit and wisdom). Maria is a design professional, a dedicated volunteer, an ardent fly fisher, and a good person who is simply a pleasure to work with. As editor of RipRap for the past six years, Maria’s finished product each month IS Kiap-TUWish for 70% of our nearly 400 members who can’t attend chapter meetings or other chapter activities. And what does one say about Perry? In addition to being a tireless advocate for his beloved Trout Free Zone, or TFZ as Perry refers to it, he is probably one of the most experienced and talented fly fishers and fly tiers in the chapter, if not in the state. For at least 10-12 years, Perry has tied boxes of flies that are given out as door prizes in honor of his friend, Dry-Fly Dick Frantes. Perry has also made use of his career in human resources and labor negotiations to give the board the long view on dealing with issues we face from time to time. Perry helped organize our annual chapter meetings in Polk County for our “northern” members, and even helped teach a few of us how to fish. But most of all, we will miss Perry’s dry wit, his gift for story-telling and his dogged insistence that there aren’t any trout north of Highway 8, in his beloved TFZ! Thank you Maria and Perry for your service. Our chapter is better because of it.
Spring Appeal: By now you’ve probably noticed that you didn’t receive your annual Spring Appeal donation request. The Spring Appeal Committee had everything ready to go when the coronavirus stay-at-home orders hit. The committee recommended, and the board agreed, that it just wasn’t appropriate for us to be asking for money when some members were without work, others were watching their retirement savings plummet and still others might have been sick. You’ve all been very generous with your donations in the past and will be again in the future. So for right now we’re going to rely on your past generosity to carry forward our shared coldwater conservation mission.
May Chapter Meeting with WIDNR via ZOOM: Last but not least is our May chapter meeting with the WIDNR. This is normally the best-attended chapter meeting of the year, because Nate Anderson talks about past and future habitat projects AND Kasey Yallaly shares her trout survey data from the past year. Nothing gets our membership to chapter meetings like the possibility of finding new places to fish! We just couldn’t forgo this meeting, so we’re going to have a virtual meeting via Zoom. In case you haven’t heard of it, Zoom is a free app that allows for group meetings of up to 100 participants to take place from your computer or smartphone. You can even dial in and participate in a Zoom meeting from an analog phone. It really isn’t that hard to do. Believe it or not, even I can Zoom! Social media professional and chapter member Chad Borenz will set up the meeting and make sure it is secure. He will also send us a Zoom meeting link; the first 100 people who click on the link can enter the meeting. Kasey Yallaly and Nate Anderson will present over Zoom and you will be able to see their screens on your computer or smartphone. I’m also guessing Kasey and Nate will be willing to email you their presentations after the Zoom meeting. PLEASE NOTE: In order to attend the Zoom meeting, you will need to (1) DOWNLOAD AND (2) INSTALL ZOOM BEFORE YOU (3) CLICK ON CHAD’S ZOOM MEETING LINK.
And now back to the first robin, pussy willows, spring wild flowers, noisy wood ducks and gobbling turkeys. All of these remind us that SPRING IS REALLY HERE! We really did make it through the long, grey winter and the world around us really is
springing to new life again. In some ways, the coldwater resources we’ve worked so hard on for so long are doing better than
some of us are doing this spring. My dad used to say, “Hope springs eternal in the human breast!” He would say it partly in jest, with an Irish twinkle in his eye, but he was partly serious, too. He said it to encourage us to take heart and to have some hope, when we were discouraged about something going on with friends or at school. I believe we can all take heart in the natural signs of spring happening around us right now.
And in the meantime, get out there and fish!
—Scott Wagner
