Each of us has one, and whatever yours is, I’m hoping you will join me in considering making your own legacy gift to CalTrout. Typically that would be through a Will or Trust, like I am doing, but it could be anytime with good advance Estate Planning.
I’m a local guy, born in Berkeley, raised in Oakland, high school in Lafayette, earned a business degree at Cal Berkeley in 1957, followed by two years military service as was customary in that decade.
I can’t say exactly what brought me to a love of trout and fly fishing for them. I caught my first one at age ten but it wasn’t until I was out of the Navy and had begun a San Francisco business career that my passion and concern for trout and the natural systems that support them was truly sparked. Noontime meetings with fellow anglers at a downtown fly shop, where we swapped fishing glories (yes, some were lies), soon evolved to discussions about the mounting threats to our sport: water development; deforestation; pollution; excessive bag limits; and other human activities were quickly diminishing the ability of California to sustain quality fishing for wild trout. To us, loading up hatchery trucks with inferior inbred rainbow trout was not the answer.
Soon, a few of us coined the concept of “Natural Trout Management,” formed California Trout, Inc. and went to work to forcefully change the future we feared.
What followed over the next twenty years was game changing: the precedent setting Hat Creek Wild Trout Project; The Wild Trout Program; dozens of premium waters given special management; The California Wild and Scenic Rivers System (including federal status); successful promotion of catch-and-release as the modern angling ethic; The Smith River National Recreation Area; and much more.
I made big changes in my life to make good things happen for wild trout against a tide of threats to those remarkable critters. Sold my insurance business, led CalTrout first as a volunteer, then first employee, because in our sport “It’s About The Fish” and we need to sustain and maintain them through the ages.
That is why I have arranged a legacy gift to CalTrout. It’s like paying off an IOU for all the pleasure those fish have given me and those with whom I shared the joy. Consider making your own legacy gift. Join me in The Circle.
Contact Julie Seelen for more info: [email protected], 415-392-8887 xt102.
Left: CalTrout's founder with a beautiful fish in undisclosed location (he will never tell exactly where).
Far left: The young Richard May surviving his first catch. The fish, unfortunately, did not!
The Richard May
Legacy Circle