Cowlitz Game & Anglers

Bosch Appointed to Board of Directors
Gerry Bosch was appointed to the Board of Directors May 25. He has been very involved in CG&A activities and has demonstrated excellent leadership. Congratulations Gerry !!!

Steelhead Release
The 15,000 Steelhead smolts were released from the So Fork Toutle acclimation pond by Mike Tyrrell and hardy volunteers. In spite of some very low temperatures during the acclimation period very good growth was recorded with insignificant mortality of the stocks. Some Otters and a Mink were trapped by Al Fox which accounted for not experiencing depredation as we had last year. Copious use of bird netting supplemented by a small electric fence also helped the integrity of our defenses.

Egg Buckets
With no really big flood events after we situated the 8 Remote Site Incubators we experienced one of the more successful eyed egg hatchings. The usual 40,000 fertilized Coho eggs had very low mortalities and all the little Alvins made it into the various streams as scheduled in February. –We have received reports from more than one site of returning adult Coho where there were none previously. So congratulations to all the diligent caregivers. The everyday exam of the egg buckets in the rainy and pretty cold days are paying nice dividends.

Earth Day
Ray Swanson, Gerry Bosch and Gary Dietel displayed mock-ups of Remote Site Incubators as well as the Cowlitz Public Shooting Range at the recent Earth Day gathering at the County Expo Center. A few hundred youngsters viewed our booth. There are always interested kids when the egg bucket story is revealed.

Bob’s Trout Pond
Bob’s Sporting Goods needs about a half dozen volunteers to help the kids catch Trout June 11 at their pond in the parking lot. We will take names at the General Mtg June 8.

New Grants
We received two nice Grants for construction of the Cowlitz Public Shooting range. The WDF&W provided an $8,000 Grant toward the purchase of an automated trap machine. Derived from Pittman-Robertson excise taxes on firearms and ammo sales. The NRA Foundation Granted $9,000 toward building materials for the shooting house. These funds are from the local NRA Foundation banquets in SW Washington. The State Rec & Conservation Office Grant of $130,000 is from pistol permits. So, no State nor County tax money is involved with the Range development. NOTE; We still need $25,000 to fulfill forecast building costs ! Send in your checks !

Shooting Range getting final go-ahead Paperwork
Final tweaking of the Cowlitz County contract to accept ownership of the range and thereby provide capacity to solve the toxic clean-up surety bond problem is underway. Final signing is expected by June 10. No tax money will be required — Final Engineering & Architectural dwgs are expected at that time as well. We should be digging dirt in August !!! All pledges of cash are needed now. Pledges for labor coming up !