The Virginia Council of Trout Unlimited, VCTU, met on Saturday, September 16th at Graves Mountain Lodge. There were four members of the Rapidan Chapter in attendace. It was an eventful meeting, including a presentation by Evan Childress about geology and ecology in the Shenandoah National park.

The results of the June eDNA stream sampling will be completed by the end of the year. Evan will conduct a Zoom presentation when they are ready.

Two of the Rapidan TU members present at the meeting received awards. Chuck Hoysa received the VCTU lifetime education award. He was the Virginia state coordinator of the Trout in the Classroom (TIC) program for many years and continues to support our current TIC manager, Alan Edmunds.

Thousands of children have benefited from the program that Chuck coordinated not only for the state, but for our chapter as well. Virginia TIC along with our local Trout Unlimited chapters provide the means and equipment for participating area schools to raise trout from eggs in the classroom and release the trout in local streams in the spring.

Mike Taggart received a certificate of appreciation for his efforts and support of the Rapidan chapter and Trout Unlimited in general. He is our co-webmaster along with John Tymony.

John was unavailable for the meeting, but also received a certificate of appreciation, as he participates in many of the Chapter’s activities and has stepped up to be an immense help with our new website and the web platform for fundraising provided by TU.

During the meeting I was re-nominated and Paul Kearney joined me as VCTU at-Large members.

 

As a friendly reminder, when the trout eggs for TIC are ready to be delivered to the schools in early October, brook trout posters can be delivered with them as well. Please be sure to pick those up if you volunteer to deliver eggs.

Check the VCTU website for further details of the meeting.

VCTU Website: https://www.virginiatu.org/
Amy O.