Welcome to the first blog post for the Little Lehigh chapter of Trout Unlimited (LLTU).  When the current chapter board members set about last September to revitalize LLTU, we knew that a website would be a key communication tool for chapter members, prospective chapter members, and for our neighbors in the community looking to get to know us.  I don’t think any of us gave much thought to having a blog component on our web page.  A couple of us occasionally read the national TU’s blog (http://troutunlimitedblog.com).  But why try to reinvent the wheel when the national organization has an interesting blog already.

Our web designer suggested that we include a blog on our website, so we wondered what we at LLTU could blog about that would be original, rather than rehashing material from the national TU blog.  Then it became clear to us that many of the programs that we might want to pursue might have interesting back stories that don’t’ lend themselves to nice, concise news blurbs that would be found on the main web page that people skim to see what is happening.  OK, so here we go.

The LLTU chapter had been dormant for a couple of years, and the state council of TU said it was time for members to either step up or get reassigned to surrounding TU chapters.  Enough folks felt that the Little Lehigh deserves its own TU chapter, and enough of those folks stepped up and agreed to be on the chapter’s board of directors. 

Our first order of business was to get some interesting guest speakers for our monthly chapter meetings so that the 60-70 chapter members on our rolls would take notice and engage themselves somehow with the chapter.  And starting in October 2012, we began hosting speakers for our chapter meetings most months, and had a decent turnout of a few regulars and lots of different faces rotating in and out month after month.

We knew that our next step would be to commit to some projects for the coming year that would draw out some of our members to get their hands wet and their boots dirty.  That’s why we committed to working with the Wildlands Conservancy to remove the small dam on the Little Lehigh at Wild Cherry Lane.  We also committed to partnering with Seven Generations Charter School in Emmaus and St. John Vianney Regional School in Allentown on TU’s Trout in the Classroom (TIC) project for the 2013-2014 school year.  We hope that the dam removal and the TIC programs will offer opportunities for some of our members who are still hanging out on the banks to jump in, get their waders wet, and take pride in their membership in the venerable Little Lehigh Chapter of TU.  Step into the water with us and be part of Conserving, Protecting, and Restoring the Little Lehigh and its tributaries.