A River Within 2015 (ISA River Seining)

[Terry Dodge]

Saturday the 25th, Forest Preserves of Winnebago County's "Get Outside" program.

 

Before I get into a report of how this "A River Within 2015" event went. I would like to apologize to any members that might think they missed this event.

With the water levels being so high, I was not even sure if this event would take place. Things didn't look good last weekend, and we had rain in the forecast for the following week. I talked with the folks at FPWC and decided that we would still hold the event even if the water level were too high, but maybe give a clinic on river safety just to do something so as we could put a stamp in participants book that they take to each event to win prizes when the "Get Outside!" program wraps up in August.

Also the fact that our NW Region outings have been cancelled back to back to back so far this year, it just didn't seem right to ask members to come out and work this and then not even be able to go out on a "thanks for helping_ wade outing afterwords as the Kish is still running too high to wade. Any hoot, it was my call so be mad at me if you must. I hope you understand.

 

The River Within seining event went off pretty good. One of my concerns was mosquitoes, which ended up not being a problem at all.

The water level was up higher than I would have liked it and there was a pretty good stain to the water which made things a little bit tough. Sometimes, when you're over the age of 50, you forget that kids really don't care about level, stain, silt build up, and other such things. You put a kid in water and they just seem to have a good time.

 

Thanks to Paul and Tim for helping out. We had about 20 people show up (kids and parents) with the kids being the only ones to step foot in water. I saw a few familiar faces from last years seining and also heard a couple of the returning kids tell other kids how much fun it was last year. The kids were concerned about keeping the minnows, mussels, and crawdads out of the water too long and I took this opportunity to explain how the ISA works and how we practice Catch & Release so that when they are older they can catch the same smallmouth bass that Tim does, only their's will be much bigger and stronger.

 

The event would have been much better with a little less stain and a little less water, but it seemed that all (kids and parents) had a good time. The kids really seem to like this event and I would like to see it get bigger and better every year we do it. I'm going to have to have a sit-down with the River Gods and see if we can't come to some type of agreement with the water levels for next year.

 

Again, sorry if anyone feels left out, but with the last minute decision with the levels and all, I just felt it best to go the way we did.

We will probably be doing it again next year.