From Tom Dornack, Habitat Restoration Coordinator
52 people volunteered 860 hours to complete this project.

The CREW built and installed 29 skyhook banks hides, 4 woody debris structures, 3 rock weirs, 1 pole crib, then dragged, seeded and installed erosion control blanket on 1400 feet of stream bank.

Bennett & Son's construction company did the heavy equipment work needed to install the 680 yards of rip rap rock and slope and reshape the stream banks.

The restored area now has 7 pools the are over 4 feet deep with some as deep as 6 feet. This area before restoration only had two pools over 4 feet deep. All pool areas had LARGE cover rocks placed in them to provide better cover and create better feeding lies for adult trout. The riffle areas were salted with rock of varing sizes to improve small fish habitat and invertebrate populations. Spawning habitat was also improved because the stream velocity was increased when we narrowed the stream. Because of that, the old sediment bedload will be transported out of the restored reach leaving excellent substrate conditions in riffle area's for successful natural reproduction. Of course, the installation of all the bank hide structures and the creation of MUCH greater depth in the pool area's should dramatically improve adult trout numbers as well.

The CREW consisted of volunteers from a wide area. This included people coming from St. Cloud, TC's, SW Wisconsin, Winona, Rochester, St.Charles, Chatfield, Eyota, Lanesboro, Rushford and other small town within the region.

We had volunteers from MTA, HTU, TCTU, MN DNR, Winona SWCD, Laughing Trout Fly Tying Club, Win-Cres TU, the TUDARE coordinator, the Patagonia store in the TC's, local landowners and father son team who are working with us to help his son full his requirement for his Eagle Scout Badge.

The funding for this project came from many sources as well. The Guadalupe TU chapter in Texas donated $3,300 hundrerd, TUDARE donated $3,000 hundred, the Rendezvous III Fly Fishing event provided $800 hundred, Scott Smith the landowner contributed $ 2,000 to build the road to the site, MN DNR contributed $20,000 in rock, seed and other materials, HTU members donated $1,700 hundred dollars and money raised from the HTU Spring Banquet will needed to cover the final cost of this project. The final estimated cost of the completed project should be in the $45,000 to $47,500 range.

Again, THANKS to all of you contributed time or money to make this project OUR BEST YET! It takes ALL of us working together to "Get'er Done" RIGHT!

One more note, as I mentioned, I feel this project is the best we have completed to date, which is great, because this project will be part of the 2006 TU National Convention Conservation Tour.

We should all feel proud of showing off this project during the the Conservation Tour!

GREAT JOB, PEOPLE!

Trout Run Creek: Smith Project, June 24th-29th, 2006
Between the 24th and 29th of June, over 20 volunteers showed up on Trout Run and donated over 350 hours of their time for the Hiawatha Chapter's Restoration project. In this time, 12 skyhook bank structures were installed, 2 woody debris structures, 2 weirs, large cover rocks, and the banks were dragged and seeded along with erosion control blankets. The next work weekend is scheduled for July 8th, weather pending. For this project so far, 38 volunteers have donated 493 hours of their time to make this a huge success! Thanks to all for your help!

Photos for this weekend taken by Heath Sershen

Trout Run Creek: Smith Project, 5/20/06
We ended up with 17 volunteers putting in 83 hours to build 27 bank hide structures & install a metal gate for access purposes. Later in the day we also spent an additional 10 hours building bank hide structures for the MN DNR project that is being done just downstream from our project. We wrapped everything up about 6:30pm.