Poudre River Rainbow Trout Re-Stocking
As you know, the 2021 flash flood in the upper Poudre Canyon's Black Hollow resulted in not only the loss of human lives and homes, but also the elimination of essentially all trout that lived in the river from that point to many miles downstream. Colorado Parks and Wildlife is planning to restock the Poudre with approximately 115,000 rainbow trout - each about an inch long - between the Poudre River Hatchery all the way down to the Watson Hatchery.
Volunteers will be provided five gallon buckets (with lids) of fish from a hatchery truck, and will then transport them to a pre-determined stocking location. The hatchery truck will then move to another location where volunteer vehicles will meet up again to get another bucket of fish to stock elsewhere. The entire reach will be stocked using this leapfrog system. The goal is to spread these fish out, stocking them directly into fry/fingerling habitat providing them the best chance at success. The original idea was to stock the river using rafts, but late summer flows are unlikely to be sufficient for that.
This will be an all day effort on Thursday, August 25th. We will meeting at Ted's Place at 8:00 AM and wrapping up later that afternoon.
Access is expected to be relatively easy for most of the stocking areas, although a few locations have steep banks to access the river. Volunteers will be assigned stocking areas according to their interest and physical ability.
Please step up and do your part in getting the Poudre back on track as not only Colorado's only Wild and Scenic River, but also a great place to fish near Fort Collins!
Instructions: Click the button above to take you to the IVolunteer page. Choose a slot, click the Volunteer button and provide the required information. If you are a new Volunteer, you will receive an e-mail from rmftu.poudre_rainbow_stocking@ivolunteer.com to verify your email address. You must verify your email address by clicking on the link in that email. The slot will be locked for 10 minutes allowing you time to verify. After 10 minutes you may still confirm your slot as long as someone else hasn't taken it yet.
If you have any questions send an e-mail to Scott Baily at operations@rmftu.org.