Letter from President David Steiner (2-16-14)

Dear Fellow Members of the Northshore Chapter of Trout Unlimited,

At the last meeting on Tuesday February 4^th, a decision was made to have the Northshore Chapter remain in place, and not merge into the Edmonds Chapter. The decision was based on the Northshore membership vote, as well as input from the State Council Representatives. There was about an hour of discussion at the meeting prior to the votes being counted. Also at that meeting, four new board members were elected (listed below), which will allow the Chapter to continue and expand its capability moving forward.

As newly elected Chapter President, I’m very excited about the opportunity to serve and work alongside board members and with general membership to further define a strategy that will increase our organizational capacity, engage membership and community to encourage participation, and promote education to holistically support the TU Mission. 

As a native “Washingtonian” I have always been drawn to the beautiful surroundings (especially water) of our area and have satisfied that feeling many a day with family and friends fishing for trout and salmon on local waters in Western and Eastern WA. Along with my love of fishing I bring 18 years of on the ground conservation experience implementing multi-scale salmon habitat restoration and water quality improvement projects in major watersheds across the central Puget Sound region. 

Newly elected officers are:

President:             David Steiner - steiner99er@frontier.com

Vice President:            Steve Winder - steve@rwinder.com

Treasurer:            Chris Tompkins - ctompkins84@hotmail.com

Secretary:             Jeff Moore - mooremljeff@yahoo.com

Please feel free to contact myself or other board officers at their individual email’s listed above or at the general email for our chapter at northshoretroutunlimited@gmail.com.

I would also encourage all our members to let us know of their current email addresses so we can send you the newsletter by e-mail. This saves the chapter money for other important things. Send us a note to northshoretroutunlimited@gmail.com

The chapter also has a new Facebook page to keep our membership informed as well as our blog. Be sure to “like” us! These can be found at:

www.facebook.com/Northshoretroutunlimited

As a reminder, the next regularly scheduled chapter meeting is on Tuesday March 4^th from 7:00pm to 9:00pm at the Shoreline Lake Forest Park Senior Center, 18560 1st Ave NE, Shoreline, WA 98155. http://shorelinelfpseniorcenter.org/

I look forward to interacting with everyone to have fun and get some cool things done! Stay tuned for more exciting info in the coming months!!

Best Wishes,

David Steiner, Chapter President 

Mission: Trout Unlimited is North America’s leading coldwater fisheries conservation organization, dedicated to the conservation, protection and restoration of trout and salmon fisheries and their watersheds. The organization has more than 130,000 members in 450 chapters in North America.

Meetings / Calendar of Events

Meetings / Calendar of Events

The next regularly scheduled chapter meeting is on Thursday April 3^th from 7:00pm to 9:00pm at the Shoreline Lake Forest Park Senior Center, 18560 1st Ave NE, Shoreline, WA 98155. http://shorelinelfpseniorcenter.org/

The May meeting will be on Thursday May 1, 2015 at 7pm.

We are planning our Kids Fishing Clinic for June, 2014. We will announce the exact date in the near future.

Barr Creek Update

The chapter has had an ongoing project restoring Barr creek (near Monroe, WA) over the last 10 years. With a multitude of wood placements, and native plantings, the area has really been transformed. On a recent visit to the site I was impressed by how much better the stream was doing, and the size of the trees that we had planted. We now have alders over 50 ft, Doug firs over 30ft and tons of good cover. I saw some pink salmon carcasses on the banks, and signs of spawning reds. There was even a deposit of bear scat near the pond; it looked like the bear was eating pink salmon. Both Barr and Kissey creek are important “off-channel” rearing areas for anadromous fish, and also provides habitat for a multitude of other species.

Overall the area is doing well, but we need to continue to do maintenance on the site. There is a need to knock back the blackberry vines to keep them off the trees, some general weed whacking, and additional plantings. We will plan to have a work party in the spring of 2014, we can use as many volunteers as we can get. The work at Barr and Kissey creek greatly benefits Salmon and Steelhead; biological studies have shown this area to be highly productive. Anyone that is interested in helping at Barr creek please contact Chris Tompkins (ctompkins84@hotmail.com).

Here are some recent photos from my visit at Barr creek in November 2013.

Chris

Pink Salmon Carcasse

Cedar Tree planted in 2011

Barr Creek

Kissey Creek

Bear Scat

Kissey Creek

Barr Creek

Barr Creek

Cottonwood planted in 2009

Kissey Creek

Barr Creek

Barr Creek

Barr Creek

Cedar tree planted in 2010

Barr Creek

Kids Clinic 2013

We had great weather at our annual Kids Fishing Clinic this year. The fishing was great thanks to the trout provided by WDFW and all the hard work by Northshore Trout Unlimited members. This event is funded through donations to the chapter, we greatly enjoy putting on the event and seeing all the smiles on these children's faces. The chapter provides all the fishing gear, the event is a way to introduce kids to fishing. Thanks to all the members who helped put this event together, and thank you to all the parents for your donations and for bringing the kids down. We will hold the event again next year in June.

2013 Kids Fishing Clinic

Our annual Kids Fishing Clinic is going to be held on June 1, 2013 at Tracy Owenn Station in Kenmore WA. The event runs from 8am to 12am for kids ages 3-14 and is free. Bring the kids down! The chapter provides all the fishing gear you will need. Thanks to Washington State Department of Wildlife for the donation of this years trout, we typically get over 1000 catchable trout for the event along with a some big ones too.

Here is a link to the park where we hold the event, we will be out on the big pier.

http://myparksandrecreation.com/ParksTrails/Details.aspx?pid=340