2018 President's Meeting in Review

Fellow board members:

We had a great State Presidents meeting this weekend. If I could say it in one short sentence:

"WCTU is alive and well. In fact it is probably in the best shape that I personally seen in the last 20 years."

We have strong leadership in the executive and we are definitely back on track to be very influential in policy making at the state, regional, and national level. With a membership of nearly 5,000 we have already made some giant steps in conservation and resource management in the state and the other good news is that we are working on regional policy with Oregon. With a new chapter now in Walla Walla that was voted in at our meeting... Idaho is next.

We had a great presentation on Columbia River Policy by our WDFW Commissioner Dave Graybill. This policy in negotiation will give us in the Upper Columbia more input on fish allocation, so we can meet the federal standards on sport fisheries currently being ignored by the lower part of the river co-managed by Washington and Oregon. By the way, our meeting in Leavenworth was attended by a key member of Oregon TU. He was very positive about a cooperative effort going on between Washington and Oregon.

On Friday night we hosted the famous IVTU BBQ at Osprey on the Wenatchee River. Although we did not have salmon this year we did have the delicious Carolyn Lang BBQ Chicken cooked by husband George… The over 25 guests from Seattle to Spokane and all points between were happy and full campers…. Our club is lucky to have such great members as George and Carolyn.

Also attending was the famous Dustin Hoffman and his wife Corrine who happens to be our executive Director in charge of Media etc. Other locals attending were Jenny and Bill Goebel and Dave Graybill.

We topped off the evening (after carrot cake) with a walking tour of the Peshastin Mill Site in which we walked the trail along the Wenatchee River. The TU members were all smiles and could not believe that we secured this 15 acres along the Wenatchee River for $465,000 in one year with no grants, state, or federal money as explained by Lisa Pelly….. Jenny and Bill members of IVTU also explained some of the ideas in the works for the adjacent 48 acres. WOW!

To say the least this was a busy weekend and it even carried over to Sunday, June 10, when Jim Fender and I participated in the kids fishing derby at Bee Hive above Wenatchee. It was well attended and very cold……. Jeff Stroup got sick but coordinated our participation with all the agencies.

I hope that all of you realize that our mission is working and how important it is that we continue to strive forward. Thank all of you for your time an effort and we have one project to complete in June and that is to clean out our Acclimation/Kids Fishing Pond sometime in the next two weeks.

WDFW is planting about 1,800 trout in the pond on June 26th for the TU Kinderfest Fishing day on Wednesday, July 4th. We need help! Please contact us at iciclevalleytu@gmail.com.

Thank you to all who participated in our President’s Meeting, and we look forward to seeing you all soon!

Bob Stroup

President, Icicle Valley Chapter Trout Unlimited