Things have been going well since my first letter. We had a nice opening day; fish were stocked in the Wappingers Creek on a 90 degree day and well attended by us. The rest of the local streams have been stocked.
We have had two very well-attended meetings with the speakers, George Daniels and Lorean Williams and I hope this will continue. We are going to try to make some improvements to our meeting format that will hopefully speed things up. I will try to have a table set up as you arrive where you can examine the raffle items for the evening and purchase your tickets. This is where we will also set up the flies we tied and we will have the Chapter's Dutchess county maps and TU patches for purchase. We seem to be doing well with the choices for raffle items. Please bring it to my attention if you would like any special items or have something different in mind.
Thanks to Don Traver for donating several books (a box full of them) to us that will be a part of the raffle for a long time.
It was also brought to my attention that we should be starting our meetings off with the Pledge of Allegiance. So the Pledge will be part of our future meetings.
My first order of business after this should be to seek out and welcome new members and visitors. Please help me greet and welcome them. We have had several of each lately. I also encourage members to submit stories and pictures to Sig for the website. As time allows we will ask for members to share their recent experiences with the group.
We could use more volunteers who wish to organize fishing trips. Trips anyone?
Business items are: Success at the Guarino farms Earth day. Successfull 3 days with the Maine Vets and a very special THANKS to Joe Rist for all his setup work. It went off without a hitch. Stream monitoring buttons has started and a Club trip to the West Branch was also Great.
My March Brown parachute finally paid off for me after fishing it all weekend. The Dream Catcher cabins were of executive quality. Thanks to Steve Little for all his organizing and hard work to make this trip a success even though the West Branch blew out the night before we arrived. Having a copy of Paul Weamer's Upper Delaware River was valuable to have.
Charlie Fiske has some new ideas for stream work and more of that is to come as he continues his research for this as a project. The basic concept is to build structure to help and protect fish.
It might be nice to have a good and welfare report for our TU family at each meeting. Maybe we can have a volunteer to keep us advised and accept a new role.
I was at the CFFCM this past week and just thought I would let you know that they have made remarkable improvements to their facilities. I knew they had refurbished the bunk houses with insulation and rough cedar paneling, but it was the first time I was able to see the renovations made to the kitchen and bathrooms. The improvements are amazing. The new tile in the kitchen, bathrooms and showers is very nice plus from what I could tell they have partially new appliances. Just wanted to let everyone know that our efforts and donations have been well spent. I feel proud that our chapter contributed to these improvements. This was also reported by Steve Dolce.
A good report came in from the Overlook Park and Morgan Lake events, and it is hard to believe that Kenny Rose, who is stepping down, has run these events for 25 years.
Looking forward to our next general meeting.
God bless.
Doug Mershimer
