Trout Unlimited wants to preserve streams

By DAN KEGLEY/Staff

“Where’s the Best Trout Water in the State? Southwest Virginia!”
Thus begins a digital postcard sent to local Trout Unlimited members to drum up interest among themselves and potential members in the formation of a new TU chapter to serve this region.
The card is from Justin Laughlin, a stream restoration biologist with the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries who has a strong, collaborative relationship with TU. Laughlin is promoting the meeting to show that “citizens can get involved in wildlife conservation issues through Trout Unlimited,” he said.
“Learn how Trout Unlimited can help conserve, protect, and restore the best trout streams in the state and, if you want, start a new chapter of TU,” the card said.
The meeting is set for Saturday, March 1, at 10 a.m. in VDGIF Region 3 Office, 1796 Highway Sixteen, south of Marion.
“TU is much more than just a fishing club,” Laughlin said. That’s reflected in TU’s mission, “to conserve, protect and restore North America’s coldwater fisheries and their watersheds,” he said.
TU’s local chapters “form an army of volunteers that are at the forefront of fisheries restoration work,” Laughlin said. “VDGIF and TU has similar missions that compliment each other’s actions and conservation efforts.”
Laughlin has a counterpart at TU, Ray Mullins, a field biologist who went to TU from VDGIF last August. Mullins works for habitat restoration between Staunton to
Bristol. He’ll be at Saturday’s meeting.
Two TU chapters already exist in Southwest Virginia, in Galax and Wise. A new chapter would serve the area in between, said John Ross, chairman of the Virginia Council of Trout Unlimited based in Upperville.
“There are 125 members in the region and a lot more folks that fish for trout down there,” Ross said Monday. “There’s a lot of conservation work to be done in the Whitetop-Laurel Creek, the South Fork of the Holston, and Little Tumbling Creek.”
Chapters are for trout anglers interested in “taking care of the resource,” Ross said, and that group is not limited to people who fly fish. “Trout Unlimited is heavily associated with fly fishing, but you don’t have to be a fly fisherman to be interested in conservation. I would hope that no matter what tackle people use, if they value the resource, they’ll come on out.”
Chapters adopt their own areas of concentration, from stream care to youth education and related activities in between in all kinds of combinations.
“The focus is up to the members,” “Ross said. “Conservation of cold water habitat is important,” but teaching younger people about conservation through programs like Trout in the Classroom is also vital, he said.
The state council’s role, he said, is providing resources to help chapters achieve their goals.
Ross suggested the new chapter may not be tied to a single location, but be regionally based with meetings held in different towns.
“The idea is since we don’t have a high density of TU members relative to the population there like we do in Northern Virginia, it may not make sense to have it in one spot,” Ross said. “You might meet one month in Abingdon, one month in Wytheville, one month in Marion,” so that in a year, meetings would be held near members’ homes. “People don’t want to drive to meetings.”
Other chapters, he said, use such a flexible concept, like the Northern Shenandoah Valley Chapter that meets in Front Royal, Strasburg and Luray, Ross said.
“Saturday’s meeting will ask the question, does this make sense?” Ross said.
Trout Unlimited membership annual dues range from $20 for those under 18 and 62 or over, to $35 regular, $50 family, $295 for outfitters and guides, and $1,000 for a life membership. The organization is non-profit.
Smyth County trout fishing is gaining national exposure. Earlier this month Mike Pawlawski, host of the Outdoor Channel’s fly fishing show “Familiar Waters,” brought his production company to film a segment on the South Fork of the Holston River.
Pawlawski’s host for his visit last week, fly fisherman and conservationist Richard Formato, said a clean, cool stream with a balanced ecosystem in and around it, likely holds trout.
A new TU chapter could help ensure the river, and the region’s other trout streams, remain among the best in the state.