2025 Rhode Island Trout Unlimited Annual Banquet

We should celebrate something every year. A birthday, a new ’77 Chevy C/K pickup, a grandaughter’s graduation, a few pounds lost and not so quickly found again, the coolest new rescue pet. Whatever your event, we’ve earned a spring of cheer and reminders to prepare for all that will be new again. I always loved the way the poet Robert Hunter wrote, “Lightly sung, her song is the latch on the morning’s door.” That’s how I feel about Spring, with her blooms, desires, unveilings and surprises so this year will be no different. Spring will again unlatch my recharged, hope-filled year, which begins with the Rhode Island Trout Unlimited annual banquet, an afternoon celebration with silent and live auctions, conversations, cocktails before dinner and this year, guest speaker George Daniel.

Mr. Daniel is the Director of Joe Humphreys Fly Fishing School at Penn State University and former competitor for Fly Fishing Team USA, has earned back-to-back U.S. National Fly FIshing Championships titles and was ranked as high as 5th in the world. He has also served as Team Captain for Fly FIshing Team USA and Coach for the U.S. Youth Fly Fishing Team. He will share his experiences through a career as an outstanding fly angler, guide, author, photographer and mentor.

RITU’s Annual Fundraiser Banquet Is A Spring Highlight

TU CEO and President, Chris Wood

RITU’s Annual Fundraiser Banquet has great precedent, as several noted and respected speakers have taught and entertained from the podium. Chris Wood, President and CEO of Trout Unlimited, has stood before a full room to share thoughts on conservation and observations from getting his hands dirty hauling rocks to free the Flat River. In 2023, Simon Gawesworth artfully combined decades of fishing, writing, travelling and casting to instruct without burdens of ego or long winded passages.

The banquet’s formal name is the Rhode Island Trout Unlimited Annual Fundraiser Banquet and Auction. It’s a reason to drive north of Tower Hill, all the way to Quonset, to see friends, eat heartily and leave with an canoeload of gear for the season, all of which suppports the chapter and cold water fishes. It’s a date for any angler’s calendar before they fill with other events that don’t include silent auctions, fishing trips and roast beef.

Characters, Conservation and Cheese Platters

Truth told, at last year’s banquet, after a few glasses of red and a fine double IPA, my wife and I split up. It was destined to happen, given our many years and seasonal challenges. With that curious, simmering adult gaze, we went our different directions, with members huddled around a towering cheese platter none the wiser. Sullen for my singleness, reluctantly I turned to a silent auction teeming with treaures of wine, line and fine reels. Silent auctions, the kind where you’re not supposed to offer bids less than minimum amounts, which still appears to be a struggle for some, are for walking linen-topped tables over and over, especially once you’ve keyed in on that box of Orvis flies or musty two weight in an original wood box you really want and really don’t need yet still hover near with a touch of possessiveness. The TU banquet is no place for deliberations of wants versus needs. She, more accustomed to refined conversations of adventure and travel, followed the siren of maestro Jeff Perry running the head table with quick wit and faster live auction sales pitch. Twenty minutes later, reeling with joy of all the good gear perused, I tried heartily to convince her I surely would win. For some reason, additional fly boxes, rod tubes and Cassius Coolidge-inspired streamside paintings of both, did little to sway her but afterall, it’s a night of fundraising for the chapter, not convincing our better halves of what we have or have not. At our seats, we held hands and hoped for the best for both of us. Quietly I prayed for the day with Jeff, only to be outbid. Fishing and catching.

As of this invitation to RITU’s Annual Fundraiser Banquet, Mr. Perry was warming his lively auctionering skills for a float for two with the Harrison brothers in western Massachusetts, a two person Casting Distance and Accuracy class at LL Bean, a Yeti Tundra 35 Hard Cooler, a black Abel #2 Trout Reel, a Yeti 26 ounce water bottle with a cool RITU logo and something about an inshore trip in the prettiest Jones Brothers boat with someone named Jeff Perry or someone but I wouldn’t focus on that trip too much…It will probably rain and you won’t want to go.

The Rhode Island Trout Unlimited Annual Fundraiser Banquet and Auction will be held on Saturday, April 5 at the Quonset “O” Club in North Kingstown, beginning at 3:00 pm. This is an opportunity to connect with like-minded individuals who share your passion for conservation and fishing while supporting a great cause. Tickets are available on line, and you really should spend some time on their new website, send a request via email, or view the chapter website.