 Gavin Landis, a 13-year-old from rural Sunbury, dumps a bucket of trout into the Little Shamokin Creek on Feb. 24, 2021. Hauling a bucket brimming with large, squirming trout fresh from the Tylersville Hatchery, 13-year-old Gavin Landis carefully edged his way through melting snow and ice to the banks of the Little Shamokin Creek near Sunbury.
As he released the contents of his bucket into the clear water below, Gavin noticed a medium-sized Rainbow trout wedged between two rocks near the shore. He quickly slid down the bank and nudged the trout to the center of the creek.
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 Mifflinburg High School principal Casey Magargle has two major passions in life -- teaching young people and fishing. The Bass Pro has been instrumental in a school Junior Bassmaster program that has dominated state titles and even took a national championship a few years back.
In this week's Middle Susquehanna Riverkeeper podcast, he shares his story about the program, his personal side "hobby" of creating lures via the Sneaky Hollow Bait Company, important trends he has seen in the health of the Susquehanna and the fish he catches from it and talks about the importance of teaching young people to fish early in life.  A central Pennsylvania veteran recently was concerned about water quality on his farm and reached out to an agency that helps those that once served our country become better farmers.
“We were able to get a technician on his property who noticed there was a stream that could be better protected,” said Mimi Thomas-Brooker of the Pennsylvania Veteran Farming Project. “Instead of going through some long process to put a buffer in, he was able to access the 10 Million Tree Partnership and has already been planting trees that will improve the streambanks significantly. As trees are going in, he is seeing results and it’s all because of the partnership with 10 Million Trees.”  Evey Concannon, of Luzerne County, won the 2020 Pennsylvania American Water "Protect our Watersheds" Art Contest as a fifth-grader last year. Entries are being accepted through April 23 for the 2021 Protect our Watersheds art contest organized and provided through Pennsylvania American Water.
Evey Concannon, a Luzerne County fifth-grader from Fairview Elementary School last year, won the grand prize in the 2021 contest. For her efforts, she won a Barnes and Noble gift card and her original artwork has been featured on “bloomer cards” and distributed across the state. Bloomers are seed-filled cards that, when planted and tended, produce a variety of wildflowers.  Playing around with a cheap CD burner at the office recently, I burned as many of the Songs of the Susquehanna submissions onto a CD.
I wanted to get a feel of how many songs we might get on an average-sized disc – what I ended up with is an endless loop of songs that keep playing over my truck’s speakers. It’s hard to turn them off. They’re that good.  Bobby Hughes shows off a native trout caught along Bowman's Creek. Photo by Dr. Joseph Simons III Conservationist Bobby Hughes, executive director for the Eastern Pennsylvania Coalition for Abandoned Mine Reclamation (EPCAMR) and executive vice president for Pennsylvania Trout Unlimited, doesn’t consider himself much of an angler.
But that didn’t stop him from escaping the stressors of the pandemic via a native trout fishing expedition along a few “honey holes” of Bowman’s Creek last year.  Photo of Franklin Kury from the cover of his book, "Clean Streams, Clean Politics" Pennsylvania is one of the only states in the nation in which we have a constitutional right to “pure water,” along with clean air and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of the environment.
One of the leaders at the center of the Environmental Rights Amendment to the state constitution – passed 50 years ago this May – was Franklin Kury, a Sunbury native who rode a clean streams platform to the first of three terms in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in 1966. |
AuthorsRiverkeeper John Zaktansky is an award-winning journalist and avid promoter of the outdoors who loves camping, kayaking, fishing and hunting with the family. Archives
October 2024
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