MadDog Trout Unlimited invites community to fishing outing

June 3, 2023 | By Waterbury Roundabout 

The MadDog chapter of Trout Unlimited is throwing a special community cookout and fishing outing on Saturday, June 10, and members invite the community to join them. 

The free family-and-kid-friendly gathering will be held, (light) rain or shine, from noon to 3 p.m. at Walter Kelley Park in Middlesex – right at the confluence of the Mad River and the Winooski River. Vehicle access from U.S. Route 2 is across from the former state police barracks. Look for the MadDog sign.

Attendees are invited to fish at the Mad/Winooski river confluence, check out the fly-tying table, test skills with the fly-casting competition, or just learn to fly-cast and tie a trout fly. There will be a raffle for a stand-up paddle board, snacks – including MadDog hot dogs – and beverages. 

Trout Unlimited is a national nonprofit organization with more than 300,000 members organized into about 400 chapters from Maine to Montana to Alaska. Its staff lawyers, policy experts and scientists work out of more than 30 offices nationwide. These conservation professionals ensure that the organization is at the forefront of fisheries restoration work at the local, state and national levels.  

The local chapter is named with the geographic descriptor of the loose, self-claimed boundaries of the waters that the group calls home: the Mad River to the north, and the wild-trout Dog River to the south. Both are tributaries of the grand Winooski which, from its headwaters in Cabot to somewhere around Bolton Dam, offers “home waters” to most MadDog members.

The MadDog Trout Unlimited mission is to conserve, protect and restore north-central Vermont and Northeast Kingdom coldwater fisheries and watersheds through education, advocacy, and boots-on-the-ground conservation to ensure that robust populations of native and wild coldwater fisheries thrive, so that future generations can enjoy healthy fisheries in their home waters.