This morning I pulled into a local fishing access lot and saw the truck of another fisherman I have have run into a couple times at this local stream. As I started my way down the trailI heard a chain saw running. When I got to the bottom of the trail I saw Tim the owner of the truck in the stream cutting up a large maple tree that had fallen into the stream.It was lying across one of the better pools. I put down my rod and helped him remove the tree from the stream for the next hour.Has anyone else ever taken care of a problem similar to this?
Yes Willow it was up by Bear Track Campground on the Little Manistee River in Michigan. My favorite group of 4H kids doing some clean up work.
By the way, welcome back and join us in the chat room any time around 9pm your time.
On a smaller scale, some times. I always wondered if it would be considered “improving one’s lie” by removing downed tree limbs from a stream to make it easier to cast and get a good drift? Guess I figure I’m helping the next fisherman that works the spot; trout probably prefer the extra cover.
Regards,
Scott
No. While I am not against stream improvement projects, I wonder if removing a tree that has fallen into the stream really an improvement. After all, that tree could have provided a good hide to protect trout from predators.
Just my 2cents.
While I have never taken place in stream improvement projects, I always carry a trash bag and pick up the trash that people leave behind. This is one of my pet peeves. Why is it that people are so damned lazy and disrespectful that they feel the need to leave there trash for everyone to enjoy, same thing with cigarette butts. Although I am a smoker, it has never crossed my mind to through the butt onto the ground or throw it into a stream and that goes for on the street also. I do what we call in the Army, field dressing it which you empty the tobacco and put the rest in my pocket until I get to a place I can properly dispose of it. Man, people can really erk me sometime.
I am getting ready to turn in my application to my local chapter of TU and look forward to doing some improvement projects on our local waters.
Hell no! And unless your a fish bio you shouldn’t either. Removing falling trees is harmfull not helpfull. They reheb streams/river by putting in fallen trees, not removing them.
Here in Washington State you might get a heavy fine. It is illegal to remove fallen trees from the stream.
I think there is a big difference between cleaning up a stream from man made debre and removing something the fell in the stream naturally, in this case a tree. Clean up the man made clutter and leave nature alone.
Although I have never smoked an entire cigarette I picked up a lot of butts in the 23 years I spent in the National Guard. Thank you for explaining what I remember as field stripping a cigarette butt. I think you should have to return 20 butts and the pack to buy another pack of cigarettes.
It wasn’t to long ago, there was quite a flap out here about an outfitter whose employee decided to remove some shoreline - cast inhibiting vegetation that was problematic for their paying customers. If memory serves they got a pretty good wrap on the knuckles from one of the wildlife / wild lands management agencies and they earned a good deal of ire / bad rap from the local anglers.
Observe and report, leave the riparian work to those with the training and the uniform.
It depends where you are at. If you’re on a big water and the tree is not a blocking or potential routing obstacle…leave it. But if it’s on small water where it can span and during high water could easily sweep downstream into cabins or whatnot, or completely block and reroute water potentially flooding?..then by all means cut it out if legal to do so. On private land of course. So…alot of grey area there. 
… and the guys with uniforms.
In '97 or '98 I was camping at the rather remote Shoshone Campground on the SE corner of Great Basin National Park. The last night there was quite the windstorm. I was awake half the night wondering if one of the trees would fall over on my camp, and maybe destroy the shell on the truck, or the truck itself.
On the way out the next morning, I came around a bend, and there was a tree down across the road. On the far side of the tree was one of those huge SUV’s, with a quite attractive young woman all decked out in designer hiking clothes lounging against the front bumper.
Her friend, a rather large young fellow, had chopped down a smallish evergreen tree, stripped all the branches from it, and was using it as a lever to move the downed tree. He would put the end of the lever under the tree, give a huge and loud lunge, and the tree would move a few inches, or not. Then another heroic effort, and another few inches, maybe.
I walked over to the top end of the tree, which was laying kind of diagonally across the road, and lifted on it. Heavy, but not all that heavy. I lifted it enough that I could drag it, pivoting it on the stump end, completely off the road.
When I finished, the rather large young fellow was glowering at me. His quite attractive young companion had something of a smile on her face.
On down the road, I mentioned the incident to a Forest Service ranger that I ran into. He said he wished he would have been there to fine the guy for cutting down a live tree.
John
A couple of weeks ago, I cleared all the down trees off the trails along the banks of the stream that my club sponsors.
I didn’t touch anything in the river… that takes care of itself.
There’s a little feeder brook that runs out in the back of my property. Normally it’s too small to hold fish, but in the fall the little brookies move up there to spawn.
I’ll go through there before hand to clear out anything that impedes their progress and to improve the flow.
I take care of my little buddies
I know in Missouri, that is illegal to remove a fallen tree from a stream or river. The USFS will occasionally come through and cut trees out of the way for boats and canoes to get through, but a citizen is not allowed to do it.