Cleaning Up Includes Trees For Trout and Surf Day
Just like that, Christmas has passed. All that wrapping, planning, stirring, hiding, baking and unwrapping are complete. Now it’s onto a new year with her temptations, promises, resolutions and hopefully ending the holiday cookie madness. A new year’s cleanup time has arrived, so as you stow away ornaments and take down Christmas trees, we have two very good ways to help with your cleaning.
Trees for Trout, an annual event coordinated by the Rhode Island Trout Unlimited Chapter and the RI Department of Environmental Management, has become particularly important to improving river health and fish populations. The process is simple. TU volunteers collect trees after Christmas and store them for the winter. Sometime in the Spring and summer, RIDEM will work with RITU to bring the trees to certain areas of the Wood River and secure them alongside her banks. They will create more curves, which can increase water flow rates, which flush out silts and sediments and help control water temperatures and erosion. Erosion is a mighty concern for popular waters like the Wood as anglers walk her banks and quite often push gravel and silts into her streams as they access and wade. This, combined with natural erosion resulting from heavy rainfall events, can bury critical trout redds and forever alter her natural courses.
Placing trees is called conifer revetment and once secured, trees will collect flotsam and organics moving south. Over time, they begin to increase water speed, creating shade and structure while establishing new banks to provide shelter for several fish species and help river temperatures cool. They will also increase resiliency by slowing the negative effects of flooding.
RITU volunteers loading trailers with trees
On January 4, 2025, RITU and RIDEM will set up camp at the Arcadia Check Station, Wood River Arcadia Management Area, 2224 Ten Rod Road in Exeter, from 10am to 2pm. It’s an easy drive through affair where volunteers will take your tree for free, toss it into into a big trailer driven by annual volunteer Brian Thornton, and likley offer you a pamphlet explaining the process with a few goood words about Trout Unlimited. Trees should be at least five feet tall, be free of tinsel and such and they ask that you bring no more than five. This day is a really wonderful example of people helping a river but there is a limit to how many trees can be properly moved in a short time. Every tree makes a difference and if you are one of those folks who has wondered why we celebrate the birth of Christ by chopping down a tree, then this is an excellent way to see that tree reborn and supporting a popular river.
Wood River conifer revetments
Trees for Trout Leads to Tables for Treasures
On Saturday, January 11 from 8am to 2pm, the Narragansett Surfcasters hosts their annual Surf Day. Built on a solid foundation of charity and community service, the Surfcasters have grown Surf Day into a major event at the Narragansett Community Center, 53 Mumford Road in, obviously, Narragansett, RI. Plug builders like Solitice, Vinnies, 401 and Hog Island will have tables full of their work. Master wood carver and all around talented, excellent human Matt Thayer, will showcase his Klondike Customs while the classic showman Mr. Poseidon works the room. That guy is reason enough to go shop the dozens of tables.
The infamous Mr. Poseidon
The real reason for Surf Day is the exchange. On the tip of a cold season, Surf Day is an exchange of people and products, laughs and memories. There’s coffee and clam chowder, business deals and hugs. Tables are heaped with bargains and classics. Many of the biggest names in surfcasting related gear will be there, displaying right alongside a guy who cleaned out his garage and has a topped a table with used everything. It’s a good day to stroll, shop, imagine and trade. The Community Center will bustle with laughs and “Oh my God’s” as anglers and kids find deals and discoveries of plugs, rods, reels, waders, antiques, collectibles and must-have’s they didn’t know they must have. Then, way over in a corner, behind a stack of plastic lure boxes or a pyramid of Penn 704 Spinifishers, will be that beautiful plug, that wooden needlefish masterpiece with the right shades of yellows over indigo with a brush of sparkles, that you have always wanted. Surf Day gladly blurs the line between needs and wants.
Fly tyers learning from Rosie
Founding member Nelson Valles will be there, chronicling the day, revisiting some great moments of his many years in the surf. Maybe you can wedge your way into a coversation with President Bruce Bain, the most amazing club leader who has this fine way of seeing positives in any light while always saying thank you. This world needs more Bruce Bains.
Of course you should pay a visit to Al Gag. Few men have his depth of knowledge and understanding how fish hunt and feed. Meeting Rosie of Rosie’s Rod and Fly Shop will be a Surf Day highlight.
Rosie and her dad, Hugh
She and her family are earning a reputation for top-tier flies, high quality rods and an endearing reminder of not simply the importance of small businesses, but how critical is it to support young people. Rosie is becoming a master fly tyer and already is a helpful angler with a remarkable, easy ability to share advice on patterns and locations. She’s pretty special to a lot of people, especially when you watch her teach a roomful of old salts how to complete a cinder worm or add hackle to their tackle. This can be a very challenging world for our kids so to see their smiles and honest passion for all things fishing, may just warm your heart on a cold Winter day.
This year, a new year’s cleanup time will take you from your family room to a stream to a steamy community center, all in the name of conservation, charity and fun.
Thanks for the kind words and the publicity Todd! Hope you can make it this year