About Us

Rocky Mountain Flycasters

Your local Trout Unlimited Chapter

Rocky Mountain Flycasters is a local chapter of the national (Trout Unlimited) and state organization (Colorado Trout Unlimited) sharing the same purpose and goals. We currently have about 900 members in the Fort Collins, Loveland, Greeley, and Windsor area. Let us know where you live and we can direct you to a chapter close to where you reside.

When and Where do we meet?

General Meetings are usually held the third Wednesday of each month from September through May. Please see our Calendar for upcoming meeting dates. General Meetings are usually at the Fort Collins Senior Center starting at about 6:30 PM.

Board Meetings are normally at 7:00 PM on the second Wednesday of the month. The board meetings precede the General meeting by one week. The Board meeting is open to all members. Check with a Board Member to find out where the meeting is being held as we are evaluating a new meeting location.

Who?

You do not need to be a member of Rocky Mountain Flycasters or Trout Unlimited to attend our local chapter meetings. We encourage you to join and be counted as an individual interested in cold-water resources and fly-fishing, but come to a few meetings before you make up your mind.

What do we do?

Meetings begin with a brief social gathering and fly tying demonstrations. The official general meeting at 7:00 PM includes brief RMF business, a presentation by a speaker followed by a raffle. The speaker is generally a professional guide or destination representative who discusses a specific fishing destination, techniques, and the ecology of a given area. The raffle offers exciting fly fishing equipment and accessories—and your raffle participation helps to defray the costs of the room rental. You can purchase raffle tickets for a variety of fishing related items. Fly tying, usually before the meeting starts, allows you to ask questions and learn the finer points of tying and what patterns work locally. We also have board meetings where we discuss chapter goals, projects and specific items of business.

Do we do projects?

Yes, indeed. We are currently involved in educational, community outreach, and restoration projects. Our major restoration project is the Eagle's Nest Open Space. We clean up the Narrows State Wildlife area, sections of the Poudre River as well as other areas each year. We also sponsor two scholarships. See the activities section for more details.

How do I get more information?

Your best and most immediate source is our web site. You can find out who the speaker is at the next meeting, chapter activities, and local environmental and fishing news. We are at www.rockymtnflycasters.org. You can also contact a board member listed on our board page.

Membership?

Please see our membership page for information about joining Trout Unlimited and Rocky Mountain Flycasters.

Rocky Mountain Flycasters Bylaws

Our bylaws have recently been updated and revised. Please review the recently adopted 2008 Bylaws.

Trout Unlimited & Rocky Mountain Flycasters

Mission

Trout Unlimited’s mission is to conserve, protect and restore North America’s trout and salmon fisheries and their watersheds.

TU accomplishes this mission on local, state and national levels with an extensive and dedicated volunteer network. TU’s national office, based just outside of Washington, D.C., and its regional offices employ professionals who testify before Congress, publish a quarterly magazine, intervene in federal legal proceedings, and work with the organization’s 142,000 volunteers in 450 chapters nationwide to keep them active and involved in conservation issues.

History

July 2009 will mark the 50th anniversary of TU’s founding, on the banks of the Au Sable River near Grayling, Michigan. The 16 fishermen who gathered at the home of George Griffith were united by their love of trout fishing, and by their growing disgust with the state’s practice of stocking its waters with “cookie cutter trout”-catchable-sized hatchery fish. Convinced that Michigan’s trout streams could turn out a far superior fish if left to their own devices, the anglers formed a new organization: Trout, Unlimited (the comma was dropped a few years later).

From the beginning, TU was guided by the principle that if we “take care of the fish, then the fishing will take care of itself.” And that principle was grounded in science. “One of our most important objectives is to develop programs and recommendations based on the very best information and thinking available,” said TU’s first president, Dr. Casey E. Westell Jr. “In all matters of trout management, we want to know that we are substantially correct, both morally and biologically.”

In 1962-63, TU prepared its first policy statement on wild trout, and persuaded the Michigan Department of Natural Resources to discard “put-and-take” trout stocking and start managing for wild trout and healthy habitat. On the heels of that success, anglers quickly founded TU chapters in Illinois, Wisconsin, New York, and Pennsylvania.

TU won its first national campaign in 1965: Stopping the construction of the Reichle dam on Montana’s Big Hole River. Five years later, TU helped secure a ban on high-seas fishing for Atlantic salmon. And in 1971, TU took legal action to protect the last free-flowing stretch of the Little Tennessee River. Perhaps one of the most significant early applications of the Endangered Species Act, the action stopped the Tellico dam, but only temporarily: An eleventh-hour congressional appropriations rider later doomed TU’s victory.

TU’s recent accomplishments include:

• Securing permanent protection of 140,000 acres in California's Sierra Nevada in the Pacific Gas & Electric bankruptcy settlement.
• Negotiating a water deal that permanently sets aside 10,000 acre-feet of water in Montana's Bitterroot River.
• Employing cutting-edge technology like thermal infrared imagery to direct abandoned mine remediation work in Pennsylvania's Kettle Creek watershed.
• Advocating successfully for trout-friendly operation of five dams on the Housatonic River.
• Uniting TU members in five states in a broad-based, multi-partner effort to restore brook trout in the Southern Appalachian mountains.
• Leading a landmark effort to restore fishable Atlantic salmon runs on Maine's Penobscot River.
• Coordinating the Trout in the Classroom program, which teaches children in more than 100 schools about the importance of healthy aquatic ecosystems.
• Mobilizing hunters and anglers to ensure responsible use and lasting protection of the nation's public lands.
• Launching a watershed-scale conservation effort in the 24,000-square-mile Driftless region of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa and Illinois

Driven by a powerful and dedicated grassroots network, TU is meeting the challenges of coldwater conservation and protecting our rivers and fisheries for generations to come.

Trout Unlimited Bylaws

The national Trout Unlimited official bylaws are available in PDF format. Download to read (60 KB). This may be read with any PDF reader. The best known one is Acrobat Reader free from Adobe. You may also use Preview, included in Macintosh OS X, and there are several PDF readers for Linux.