KAMO – January, 2025 Newsletter – 5 pages
For comments related to this document, contact Mike

President?s message – Hello to all KAMO members and friends of KAMO,
This is Kids And Mentors Outdoors President, Mark Walters with my monthly update. For myself and a lot of folks in KAMO, January was an active month. I have made a deal with myself to be as active as I realistically can be with KAMO and I proved it in January. I helped out with Meadow Valley’s fishery on Lake Tomah and the following week I was on the Mississippi river on Lake Onalaska for Coulee’s. Both were very successful and Coulee’s showed me that they have a solid number of helpers, both folks that have been active in KAMO for a long time and some new members as well.
Another project that I am helping out with is to grow Lake Wisconsin and I think it is going to work.There are 9 of us that are doing a group text and several of these folks are very active on Facebook in the Poynette area. We had a meeting at The American Legion and 11 people attended including 5 that just wanted to see if KAMO is something that they might be interested in.
I have mentioned this before and I will again. I have helped start a group in Necedah, I am the President and it is called NOAC, “Necedah Outdoor Adventure Club”. In 25 months we have built a beach, picnic area, ice skating rink with lights and a disk golf course.
I can honestly say that Facebook is 50 percent of our success story, that and a core of 7 very good, get it done people. Every 2 weeks Iwrite something about NOAC for Necedah’s community page. It is very popular and has helped us to come up with about $40,000.00 for a swim raft, excavation work, food for about 20 events, our disk golf
course etc. etc.
This Wednesday we are having another skate party and they are very popular, two weeks ago 70 people came to it. This week, a local food truck owner is donating 80 pulled pork meals to the first skaters and non skating but visiting around the campfire people.Folks, get on this fb thing, it will help grow your chapter.
In closing, my good friends at The Northwoods chapter held a very cool event for homeschool kids This past Wednesday and put out one heck of a neat video on fb.
As always, thank you for everything that you do for KAMO!

Mark

KAMO 2025 State Convention – Saturday, March 29th, Schmeeckle Reserve Visitor?s Center in Stevens Point starting at 9:00 am. That name is pronounced ?Schmeeklee?.

Need input from you on agenda ideas. Here?s a start:

Partnerships with Wisconsin Waterfowl Association Expo (Sunnyview Expo Center, Oshkosh – August 22nd and 23rd)
and the Midwest Outdoor Heritage Education Expo – MOHEE (MacKenzie Center – Poynette – set up – Tuesday, May 13th. Event days – Wednesday and Thursday, May 14th and 15th.)
These are prime events to spread the word about our group.

Find someone to run the Facebook account for the state. Before the convention, someone needs to find out who administers the page.

KAMO Promo Presentation – Someone outside the organization came up with the idea of putting pictures and narrative about KAMO in a brief presentation format that would be stored on a device. This device could be taken to places that have a community monitor.

Officer elections/ retry state president replacement. State President could be filled by someone outside the organization who would be mentored initially.

Upcoming multi – chapter events. Summer event in the Northwoods. Deciding on the capacity for 2025. For example, a maximum number of kids a chapter can bring.

State funding – raffle-sponsorships

Set dates for future meetings – Joe Hunt planning, 2026 state convention.

Golf Shirts/ Hoodies – We are out of the new golf shirts. If your chapter would like more, they could ordered and brought to the convention. The order would have to be placed by mid – February. Mens or womens and charcoal or blue. Predict your future needs – the order is going to have to be 20 or more. They were $20 apiece or so.
We have approximately 8 hoodies left. Large, XL, 2 XL. If we are going to order more, it would have to be 15 minimum.

Wisconsin Interscholastic Fishing Association (WIFA) Ice Fishing State Championship – Pools 7 & 8 of the Mississippi River on Saturday, 15th, 2025. This is a colossal event with over 100 participating high schools. It is possible that a school in your area will be competing there.
Lake Onalaska is on Pool 7, probably will attract a good percentage of these participants.
The lake has had significant daily fishing pressure and will have had derbies there on three consecutive weekends before WIFA comes in. It will be interesting what the lake yields after all that traffic.

Website – Please visit your chapter page to see that it is current. When I (Mike) go on Coulee?s page, I am often surprised by some out of date things I put on there myself, meaning to come back and change it in a few weeks.

New or exiting members? – Please let Mike know if someone leaves your chapter so that they can be removed from the directory and mailing lists. If you have added members, Mike needs to know this as well – those new people need to be put in the directory and added to the group mailing list. First and last name, phone number and email. Why is this brought up? Your chapter reports indicate you are getting new members, but corresponding name and contact info is often not forwarded.

Chapter Reports

Baraboo – The Baraboo River Chapter of Kids and Mentors Outdoors held our monthly meeting January 13th at Upham Woods Outdoor Learning Center. It was a busy month for our group as we reported 345 hours of getting kids outdoors. Most of this was the Annual Joe Hunt, but there was also some skiing and fishing. We reviewed our successful 2024 Learn to Hunt program (Joe Hunt) that was held December 6?8th where 19 kids put 14 deer on the pole! The Hunters Attic was again popular this year and all kids won an outdoor related prize during ?Buddy Bingo?. Next year?s reservations have been made for December 12th?14th 2025 at the MacKenzie Center. We also discussed having a ?Where They are Now? board to show some of our prior KAMO kids who are now adults/parents. We plan to hold our Mentor Appreciation Meal on Monday March 10th at Rivers Edge as a Thank You for active group members.
Our group is again proud to be a Sponsor for an Outdoor Area of Study Scholarship at Stevens Point for the 2025/2026 school year and we reviewed possible upcoming fundraiser ideas. The weekend of January 18 & 19th was the WI Free Fishing and State Parks weekend. The Lake Delton Sportsman Club hosted a Fisheree on Saturday January 18th at Mirror Lake. Our next meeting will be Monday February 10th at 7pm at Rivers Edge.

Thanks,

Greg

Coulee – Three Coulee participants, a mentor and two mentees, attended the Lake Tomah Fisheree on Saturday, January 11th. The two mentees, both young men, caught their personal best northern on tip ups that day – a 33 ½ and 31 inch fish.
Kraig Hoff had been a mentor at Coulee since our beginning in 2012. He was our treasurer. He passed away in 2023 at age 48. Coulee held a first time event to honor him – the Kraig Hoff Memorial Fishing Event on Lake Onalaska on Saturday, January 18th. There were 25 kids, 20 parents/ grandchildren, and 20 volunteers. The volunteers were from the DNR, USFWS, UMR, and acquaintances of the Coulee KAMO mentors. Thanks goes out to Mark Walters for coming in to help run the event. The event was held in tents and portable shacks to the east of Schaefers Landing. The use of tip ups made this event particularly engaging, with several northerns being taken by youngsters. The 12 degree ,windy, environment was challenging, but the use of some large canopy tents and portable shanties all with heat helped considerably. It was sunny at least.
On Sunday, January 26th, two mentors, a parent, and two kids ice fished off the Marina at Vet?s Park on the Black River. The fishing was slow, but kids always find sources of fascination on a frozen bay. We drilled our holes with a propane auger that got donated in 2023 and it started on the third pull. We logged in over 300 hours outdoors for the month of January, which is our chapter best for that month.

Dodge County Conservation – Hello everyone. DCC KAMO was pretty active in January. Five Mentors and five mentee’s attacked Beaver Dam lake for some ice fishing. Our Professional Ice fisherman set up a pretty good camp on the ice and the fun started right away. Two of the boys had more fun on the ice then they cared about fishing. Some fish were caught and during the day some lessons were learned, but all and all a very great day.
We also set up shop at cabin fever fest serving up free hot chocolate and talking to a lot of people that showed up. Despite no snow there were a lot of ice skaters enjoying free ice skate rentals provided by the ELKS Club. The Boy Scouts were serving up Beef stew, Dutch Oven Apple and Berry strudel. We held our Monthly meeting (always the last Tuesday of every month at Tower Lanes In Beaver Dam) and talked about a lot of things.
One big discussion was about KAMO being involved with the Wisconsin Waterfowl Association Expo in Oshkosh. This is going to be a 2 day event in the future, partially because well over 2000 people attended last year’s 1 day program . Our feelings as a chapter is that KAMO should be there and be there in bigger numbers than anything else in the past. If KAMO is all about getting kids outside, there is no better place to showcase what our Chapters do and let people know who we are and where everyone is located. The Youth Building is spectacular and we need to figure out something to make it happen.
Also, MOHEE was brought up and KAMO definitely needs to be there. 4500 plus kids from all over the State and all 3rd to 5th grade students – you can’t ask for anything better. Lots of things coming up and our chapter is very excited for the Month of February , Get a kid outside and see what happens.

Jim B

Lake Wisconsin – Lake Wisconsin had our monthly meeting on January 9th at the Poynette American Legion, where I believe we had 12 people attend and 5 of those were new members. We are glad to have some new energy at KAMO Lake Wisconsin. We had some members attend the Lawrence Lake Fisheree. This event does a great job supporting the kids. All the kids got a free goodie bag. They had their own roped off area to fish in. There were 10 kid bicycles given away at this event.
Members from Midwest Racks & Rods outdoors who are Mentors for KAMO Lake Wisconsin have been out ice fishing getting some kids and adults on some fish through the ice. Jesse Bricco, owner of Hunters Dream Charter Fishing, has also been getting some kids and adults out on the ice. He is also a mentor for us and has donated a free fishing trip over the years to KAMO on Hunters Dream charter Fishing out of Port Washington WI. I personally got to go with a KAMO kid on this and we had a blast out there. 10 out of 10 stars with this charter, check it out. Our next KAMO meeting is January 13th at 6:00 PM at the Poynette American Legion . We also are still actively doing gun raffles down at Gasoline Alley in Poynette WI. Stop in and check it out.

Meadow Valley – The fishery on Lake Tomah was a success.
Planning for the youth spring turkey hunt.
Started the initial planning for our next youth bear hunt.
Also please remember to send me your chapter dues: James Rydmark, E11325 N Reedsburg Road, Baraboo, WI 53913

Thanks,
Jim

Northwoods – Hello from the Northwoods! It’s ice fishing season, we hosted a homeschool group on January 29th on Lake Emily in Florence. The group is from across the border in Iron Mountain and Kingsford Michigan and consists of K through 3rd grade level students. We had 4 shacks set up on a crib reef that was constructed by our group a few years back. A video was made of the event and can be viewed on Facebook and is also on the front page of the kamokids.org website.
On Feb 15 we will host our normal winter event also on Lake Emily with a similar set up. Our plan for the bicycle raffle will be around Easter break when the weather warms up.
Soon I’ll be tapping trees again and maybe try to schedule a syrup demonstration but Mother Nature dictates the timing on that one, last year we tapped on February 2nd!!!! Unbelievably early. Keep doing good things folks!

Johnny Johnson from Florence, Wisconsin