Guadalupe River Chapter Trout Unlimited

Editor. Bob Tuttle 207 Finn Austin, TX 78734 (512) 261‑4409

Contributors: Jeff Schmitt

OFFICERS President: Jeff Schmitt (512)2824408

VP Fishing Affairs: Alan Bray (512)263‑9619

VP Chapter Affairs: Erik Bataille (512)250‑9194

Secretary: Cyndie Schmitt (512)282‑4408

Treasurer: Ron Presswood

Clem Bird

Chuck Reader

Jon Morse

Irving O'Neal

Judy Presswood

DIRECTORS

*Bob Story Marian Tilson *Jim Vynalek

+ ALL Officers (*EX Officio)

Notice of Annual Meeting & Newsletter

DATE: SATURDAY OCTOBER 22,1994

PLACE: St. Thomas Church Activity Center adjacent to the church [just below Canyon Dam on South Access) ‑Sattler, Texas. TIME: 10.00 AM ‑ Registration & Socializing Coffee Bar 10:30 to 11:00 ‑ Meeting Business Raffle Orvis Superfine Fly Rod (S. Raffle insert Sheet) Program 11:00 ‑ 12:00 ± & after lunch

LUNCH:(optional) 12:30 ‑ Some of the best Barbecue in the Hill Country! Plus chips, beans, relishes, possibly some donated deserts, an assortment of salads, and maybe some wine. If you care to bring something it will not be turned down. Several Hearty Hurrahs for Margaret Ann Johnson and her volunteer staff. The meal is self supporting so put something in the jar if you decide to dine.

At The April Meeting...

Another well attended meeting with more fresh new faces plus some really great weather. Chuck Meeder gave a slide presentation on fishing in the Green River just below the Flaming Gorge Dam in Utah. Fantastic scenery and you should have seen the trophy fish! Cutthroats, cutbows, rainbows and even some of the largest brook trout that you have ever seen. Everyone was so excited that they voted Chuck in as one of the new Chapter directors. All of these programs, arranged by Irving O'Neal, really want to make you do some traveling.

The custom Rodmaker's flyrod was won by Eric Bataille The fabulous Montana fishing trip, donated by Lewis & Clark Expeditions of Ronan Montana, is being taken by Bob Story while this is being written.

THE PROGRAM....

Irving O'Neal does it again! Joe Robinson from The Austin Angler will be here with a very interesting program. This will be his second appearance. Newcomers to fly fishing take note! Many of you have asked for this!

The program will begin before lunch and then continue on following lunch into the afternoon. The focus will be on aiding new flyfishers in the arts of fly fishing. All of you new to the sport ... bring your rod, reel, and flies (without hooks) for practice. Seasoned casters will pick up pointers but do leave the actual practice to the newcomers and, if needed, lend a hand to Joe..

Remembering his last appearance, this should be one of our outstanding programs! What a splendid opportunity to obtain casting lessons and tips from such an internationally known teacher.

His credentials are many. Writer, head instructor for several fly fishing schools, has instructed from Belize to Labrador plus areas inbetween, noted fly tyer, and the list goes on ... we are very fortunate that he chooses to live in our area of Texas.

When not traveling about, Joe can be found at The Austin Angler where he can advise you on gear selection and fishing topics.

Bits & Pieces...

When camping, hiking, or fly‑fishing, never leave evidence that you were there.

Chapter meeting dates are the 4th Saturday of January, April, and October.

Ron Presswood, our treasurer, says that you will receive your Lease Cards faster if you mail in your applications. It will take several weeks to process them and none will be issued at the meeting. All cards will be sent out by mail

Attention lease card holders ... there is an old (ancient) privy (outhouse) on the Kanz Lease. Nothing fancy but does serve a need. Suggest that you carry your own T.P. It is there, just look for it. It's off to the right adjacent to the High Road.

It has been reported that some members have brought dogs to the leases that have been observed frolicking in the water, disturbing fish, and annoying those that were fishing. All dogs brought to any lease area must be on a leash or otherwise confined. Please respect the rights of others.

Texas Parks & Wildlife now has a direct line for fishing information: Local (512) 389‑4505 or toll free (800) 792‑1112. When connected press 4 for the fish menu.

The Book...

Long time member Bud Priddy's book, "FlyFishing the Texas Hill Country" has been revised, greatly expanded and is now back in print. Over 70 pages, printed on good paper and spiral bound for ease of use.

Added contributions by Joe Robinson and David Young. New member Tom Taylor is the publisher.

Anyone fishing Central Texas would find valuable information within its pages. Almost as good as a guided tour.

The tide speaks for itself. The Austin Angler has the book in stock or contact the publisher: W. Thomas Taylor, Inc. (512) 478‑7628

Chapter Donates Boat To TP&W...

As part of the Chapter's ongoing effort to support research on the Guadalupe tailrace fishery and other Central Texas rivers, the Guadalupe River Chapter of Trout Unlimited has donated a 14' aluminum jonboat and trailer to Texas Parks and Wildlife. The electrofishing boat TP&W had been using on the Guadalupe was a converted lake boat they used to use for bass studies. It was not capable of doing the best possible survey work in the small rivers and streams here in Central Texas. "This boat

will greatly enhance the ability of TP&W personnel to conduct fishery's surveys on the shallow Central Texas rivers and streams", says Steve Magnelia, biologist at the San Marcos station of TP&W.

Over the past 3 years, TP&W has been conducting electrofishing, creel and utilization surveys on the Guadalupe River tailrace. The purpose of these studies is to allow them to make recommendations for any regulations changes they feel may benefit the maintenance and development of the resource. Our Chapter recognizes that proper regulation is fundamental to the development of quality trout fisheries and that the current TP&W study parallels our interests. The donation of this boat and trailer shows our support for TP&Ws activities on this coldwater fishery and allows TP&W to do additional work that will allow us to better understand our river.

J.S.

Report On Sylvan Dale Ranch, Colorado...

Sylvan Dale Ranch, near Loveland, Colorado, is an advertiser with our newsletter and has supported our Chapter by the donation of a free visit to their facility. Since Cyndie and I won the raffle of this donated trip, we recently had the opportunity to visit the ranch.

There are a couple of unique things about Sylvan Dale that make it well worth checking out. First, it is just over an hours drive from Denver, making it easily accessible for a business stopover visit or a short addition to any trip that takes you through the Denver airport or area. Secondly, it is reasonably affordable, at least as commercial trout fishing destination go. And last, but certainly not least, it has some monster trout that are easily accessed and caught by most anybody who visits the ranch!

The ranch consists of a nice bed & meals based guest ranch facility, with clean cabins and good food. A stretch of the Big Thompson river runs right through the ranch and provides some fairly easy and accessible wade fishing. There are also several "kiddy pond" type trout ponds right on the grounds, that are stocked with medium size trout on a put and take basis. The day we spent on the ranch we fished the trophy ponds in the lower valley. These are irrigation ponds for this working ranch. However, Sylvan Dale has developed them into quality fishing lakes by stocking each with different species including rainbow trout, brown trout, steelhead, bass and bluegill. Each pond is equipped with a very easy to use float tube ramp, making it extremely easy for most anybody to get into and out of a float tube to fish the ponds. The ranch supplies tubes, fins and even waders if you need them.

During our visit, Cyndie and I landed about 12 fish between us during the day. All were over 18" and 10 of them were over 20". The largest 2 were 26" and 27" respectively that were both fat enough to be in the 10 pound class. These fish will drag you all over these small lakes. Come to the meeting to see the photos and then be prepared to book your trip.

Sylvan Dale is well worth a visit if you are going to be in the Denver, Loveland or Estes Park area. It is a good place for the serious fisherperson or for a family vacation, as there are lots of other ranch activities to keep the family entertained while you go out for a day of unique trout fishing. Let Cyndie or I know if you want more information or call Sylvan Dale at the number shown in their ad in this month's newsletter.

J.S.

The Chapter honors the following distinguished members with an Honorary Life Membership, some awarded posthumously. This honor is reserved for commendatory recognition of individuals whose personal service contributions to the Chapter are deemed to have had significant impact and otherwise were outstanding.

Honorary Members

James Keeton

Lt. Col. Paul Schubauer

Bill Pabst

Hazel Schubauer

J. Bill Parvin

Tom Whitehouse

Glenn Richardson

Bill Cobb

Chad Oliver

Howard Itten

A Call Fop Volunteers...

I do this every newsletter and, to date, I have not been able to find people to volunteer for a couple of key duties. So, this month I will describe a couple of volunteer activities I need somebody to undertake and will give you a place to volunteered for a specific service you could provide. Remember, volunteering for Chapter services does not have to involve an overwhelming amount of time. Just a couple of hours per month in the right areas could really help us out. Here is what I need:

Advertising sales Advertising in our newsletter is cheap ($30/issue; $75/yr) and advertisers can reach over 800 of our members that regularly buy fishing, hunting, camping, travel, lodging and various other outdoor products and services. And, they can provide us with the money we need to help further develop our trout fishery. Yet, we have very few advertisers because we don't have anybody to go out and ask businesses for their support of our Chapter and offer this opportunity to reach our membership. I need a volunteer from Austin, San Antonio and Houston to give us just a few hours to call on potential advertisers.

Public Relations ‑ Our newsletter and Chapter activities often include many items of public interest or for which we need general public support. Yet, our message rarely reaches those outside of the 800 TU members that receive our newsletters. I need a member to volunteer to distribute press releases to local media and governmental agencies.

Fund Raising ‑ Most TU Chapter fund their stream improvement and chapter activities from fund raising events. These include buying and reselling fund raising items, raffles, fund drives and banquets. Other than our meeting raffles, we derive little income from some activities. I need volunteer(s) who are willing to spearhead one or more of these fund raising activities.

Board Members/of f icers ‑ Ile Chapter is in constant need of people to serve on the Board of Directors or as Chapter Officers. If you are interested in serving at this level, please let us know. Board members need to give 2‑3 hours at each of the 3 chapter meetings plus whatever additional time they are willing to give.

J.S.

North Texas Note...

Remember, there is another TU Chapter in Texas: The Brazos River Chapte in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. Contact National if you wish to join/transfer or check with:

David Hurdle at 817‑925‑5759 Brazos River Chapter/TU PO BOX 1201 AZLE, TX 76098‑1201

About Membership Fees and Donations...

It's time for us to renew our memberships and lease access permits once again. The Donation Allocation sheet has been revised and warrants afew comments.

TU Nat'l Membership ‑ Your TU Nat'l membership must be current in order to participate in Chapter activities. If your membership is current, we need your number and expiration date on your application. Otherwise, it may take us weeks to verify your membership. It appears on every mailing label you get from TU (Trout Mag, newsletter, etc). If all else fails, call the national office at 1‑800‑834‑2419 and obtain your number to avoid delays. If you are joining for the first time, please complete a TU National application and submit it to the Chapter, along with your Chapter dues. You should enter the total amount allocated to National dues and donations but you can pay with one check.

Supporting Membership ‑ A voluntary contribution of $10 is required to become a Supporting Member of the Chapter. You must be a supporting member assigned to our Chapter (066) in order to be eligible to participate in our lease access fishing programs.

Lease Access Permits ‑ The Lease access permits allow you to participate in our fish stocking and private land fishing access program. Permits are sold on a season basis only, on November 1 and ending on October 31 of the following year. We do not prorate lease access card costs. If you are buying a permit late in the season, be sure you specify for which seasson you are purchasing a permit.

Century Club Members or Special Purchase Donations‑ After much discussion at the last 2 board meetings, it was decided to leave our fee structure unchanged for this year. That makes Chapter membership and lease access cards eligible to as many new members as possible and helps keep expenses under control for those long term members living on a fixed income. However, our Chapter operations depend not only on these minimal fees but on the donations beyond these minimums that are given by many of our members. Since you have a choice on how to allocate your donations, I thought I would elaborate a bit on each of the categories you find on the application sheet.

General. Fund ‑ This fund is used from Chapter operations costs such as the newsletter, meeting space, speakers, food and other miscellaneous costs. Your basic $10 Supporting Chapter member fees automatically go into this fund, in addition to any additional contributions you may chose to make for this purpose.

Fishery Fund ‑ This fund is used to finance our lease access and fish stocking program. It covers the cost of the land leases, fish that we stock and the administrative costs associated with the lease access program. Your lease card fees and any additional contribution you may choose to make are allocated to this fund. Over the past several years, the lease access program has depended on additional donations, beyond the basic $40 lease access fee, in order to fund the level of fish stocking we have undertaken.

Research Fund ‑ This fund is used to finance activities related to understanding and developing our fishery. In the past this has included studies of the river, incubation programs, donations to the TP&W river study. In the future it could include funding research scholarships, additional river study or legislative activities related to the regulation of our river. This category funds those activities that we believe will contribute to the long term development and enhancement of our fishery. Over the past few years this category has been very under funded, yielding only a couple hundred dollars per year in new contributions. The only way the Research Fund gets money is at this time is via voluntary donations.

In many ways the Membership can set the agenda for the Chapter by allocating their donations. If you want more fish in the river to catch this year, donate to the Fisheries fund. I you want to have us bring in better speakers at the meetings or just fund chapter activities in general, donate to the General Fund. If you wish to see the Chapter become more focused on the long term development of the river, donate to the Research Fund. I would like to challenge all members who can afford it to become a Century Club Member by donating $100 this year. $50 is allocated to your Supporting Membership and your lease access card. The additional $50 can be allocated by you to Fisheries or Research in a manner that is consistent with your desires for the future of the Chapter and the river.

Survey Question ‑ All TU members assigned to our Chapter have been receiving the publication Rocky Mountain Streamside as part of their national membership. However, printing and mailing costs have forced the Colorado Chapter of TU, the organization that publishes this, to look to our Chapter for reimbursement of these costs. At our present funding level, our Chapter cannot afford to absorb these costs. Our choices are either to raise voluntary dues by $2 per year to cover these costs or to have Colorado TU drop our members from their mailing lists.

If we drop, individuals will be able to subscribe to the publication for $10 per year. Our survey is an attempt to find our rather members would support a $2 per year increase in our voluntary dues in order to keep receiving this publication. Please register your opinion. J.S.

Welcome to the '94 '95 Trout Fishing Season

I hope everybody had a good summer and got a chance to get out and fish a bit, either here in Central Texas or travelling somewhere on vacation. Now, with trout season winding down in most of the mountain states we're just about to get started here in Central Texas.

The '94‑'95 season promises to be a good one. Since I continue to get calls from members who are catching trout, all indications that at least some fish have survived the hot summer, low flows and the barrage of the tubing crowd. As soon as conditions become more conducive to stocking more fish, we'll be starting to plant the river with more fish. But, don't miss the opportunity to fish the "sleeper season" between the end of September and the beginning of December. There may not be as many holdover trout as there will be once we start stocking, but you will find plenty of trout and other warmwater fish to have fun with and you'll have the river much to yourself.

This season gets kicked off with our October 22nd meeting. In response to the requests of many of the members who are new to flyfishing, we'll be having Joe Robinson of the Austin Angler out to provide us an instructive lesson and some hands on assistance with flycasting. If you haven't seen Joe at some of our past meetings and you've been wanting to learn more about the sport, don't miss this meeting. Also, some of the best information you can possibly get about where and how to fish for trout on the Guadalupe is obtained from fellow members at our meetings.

The '94‑ '95 season also marks a point where we may be able to expect to hear the first results of the TP&W studies of our river. If their studies warrant, we may see recommendations for changes in fishing regulations that could prove quite helpful to our efforts to develop a quality trout fishery. The information from these studies may also prove helpful in longer term efforts to obtain changes to the water flows out of the dam.

This season also marks the second year that Cyndie and I will be leading Chapter activities. As you know, I made a lot of noise last year about the difference between a "Fishing Club" and a "TU Chapter". I'll probably do the same again this year. This is not because I don't like to fish. In fact, most of you who know me know that I am nuts about fishing and, like most of you, the fishing club aspect of the Chapter is what go me interested in the first place. There is plenty of interest on the part of the membership in the fishing club part of the Chapter. Therefore, I chose to use my spot in the newsletter and time on the soapbox to remind us that we are first and foremost, a TU Chapter. This means we should be just as committed, if not more committed, to the prospect of learning about and developing this river into a long‑term, self‑sustaining trout fishery as we are to putting a lot of big fish in the river to catch this year.

Throughout the year you'll have numerous opportunities to contribute to either financing or personally participating in activities to lend themselves to the "conservation, restoration and protection" of the Guadalupe river. This may be a river cleanup project, a stream improvement project or a contribution to our Research Fund. I hope everybody takes just a bit of time or money away from fishing to make some contribution to the mission of this, and every, TU Chapter.

J.S.

TP&W Stream Survey Yields Some Interesting Results...

As part of their ongoing study of the Guadalupe River tailrace fishery, Texas Parks and Wildlife conducted another electrofishing survey of the river in June. The good news is that there were still quite a few fish in the river well after our last stocking in March. In fact, TP&W found almost twice as many trout in the river this year as they did last June.

As was the case last year, the majority of the fish that are in the river are the fin‑clipped fish that our TU Chapter has been stocking. However, the most exciting news is in the unmarked fish. Of the unmarked fish that were captured, about 1/2 were rainbow trout in the 4"‑7" TP&W is not aware of anybody who stocked rainbow fry in the

river this year. The speculation is that we may have signs of a spawn, but nobody is quite ready to state that authoritatively with this little information. However, it is an exciting possibility!

On the less optimistic side, TP&W was not able to locate any of the 3,000 small brown trout we stocked last season. They have several theories as to why this fish were not found in their stream surveys. The only thing that is clear from this information is that more scientific study on our river is needed before we can know for sure what its potential as a trout fishery really is and rather or not brown trout fry represent the best species for its' long term development.

Overall, this year's study simply serves to confirm what those of you who are fishing in the summer already know. Our river holds trout year round. It may be tougher to find them in the summer (particularly between the tubers), but they are there. And, who know what those fish might be doing down there in the spring or fall? As part of their ongoing study of the Guadalupe River tailrace fishery, Texas Parks and Wildlife conducted another electrofishing survey of the river in June. The good news is that there were still quite a few fish in the river well after our last stocking in March. In fact, TP&W found almost twice as many trout in the river this year as they did last June.