You Can Save A Stream
Guest Blogger: Jim Murphy, Neenah WI, long-time J Stockard customer and avid fly tyer
Some days it’s wet, some days rainy, some days hot, some days cold. But on the appointed day, usually a Saturday, on a small trout stream, or perhaps what was once a trout stream, they gather. If the willows have formed a canopy over the stream they brush it out, if the meander has become a bow that has spread to a point that the water is just too slow they narrow the flow with brush bundles. If the main channel has become too wide and shallow they install “lunker structures” or fortify the bank with rip-rap.
Some of these men and women belong to the local chapter of Trout Unlimited, some are members of nearby chapters, and some, like I was a while back, are simply concerned volunteers. On this year’s last Stream Workday, September 6th, over 30 of these dedicated individuals, under the direction of the local DNR “Fish Manager”, bundled and brushed a section of the nearby Pine River to convert a stretch of several hundred yards into the place I now want to fish. Although there are other portions of the stream that give up sizable Browns this particular section has been pretty much “barren” according to a few locals.