Volunteer Spotlight on Mike Madigan Both my mother and father were fly fishers. They gave me my first fly rod when I was 7, a seven-foot Fenwick glass rod. For the first few years, I spent a great deal of time extricating my flies from the trees and bushes that lined...
All it takes is a little wind on the grass and you might be lucky enough to hear a little plop under the bank – maybe a beetle tumbling into the water to become a late afternoon salmonid snack. In late summer and early fall, beetles are a terrestrial staple...
In its 19th year, Minnesota Trout in the Classroom has 86 tanks in 74 schools and 2 nature centers throughout the state ready to be filled, cycled, and prepared to welcome 300 tiny, neon orange trout eggs this winter. Check out this map color coded by MNTU chapter to...
By Dr. Jennifer Biederman Walk a recently restored bend of a trout stream anywhere in Minnesota and you may notice a line of logs tucked tight to the bank, some with their rootwads still attached. That isn’t debris. It’s a feature called toewood, a design approach that uses large wood to...
DATE: 09/08/25 CONTACT: Sarah Horner, MCEA, shorner@mncenter.org, 612-868-3024 Saint Paul, Minn – A Ramsey County District Court judge ordered the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) and the Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA) to review whether the rules they have in place to protect Minnesotans’ drinking water from nitrate pollution are working....
It’s August in Minnesota. The heat has settled in, and streamside vegetation hangs thick and heavy over the banks of coldwater streams and rivers across the state. In our backyard, my daughters love to pass the time catching grasshoppers in the tall grass and tossing them into the stream, watching...
The 2025-26 Trout in the Classroom season kicked off with our first teacher and volunteer training in Duluth and the Twin Cities! This year we’re holding training sessions in two locations to support our growing and dispersed network of classrooms across the state. The location of the trainings also offered...
When a stream restoration project wraps up, the work on the ground is just beginning. During construction, streambanks are graded and soil is heavily disturbed throughout the project reach. In most cases, to restore the stream’s access to its floodplain we must grade back soil. This requires that most vegetation...
We are looking ahead to the next state legislative session and preparing our policy platform. Preventing Fish Kills will continue to be one overarching goal of MNTU as we consider specific hurdles to our work conserving, protecting, restoring, and sustaining Minnesota’s coldwater fisheries and their watersheds.Some issues we know will...
Legislative session was more a game of defense, rather than much momentum forward this year. In general we held the line on our priority issues and were happy that so many of you showed up to attend rallies and hearings, and in submitting letters of concern to your elected officials....
