“Oh What a Night!”

Posted On May 19, 2025

With apologies to Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons, what a night indeed! Saturday, May 17th, we closed out the FVTU 2024-2025 season with our annual banquet at Grouse Mountain Lodge in Whitefish. This was our twenty-fifth, twenty-third, thirty-second, umpteenth annual banquet and a big success by any measure.

Over one hundred enthusiastic FVTU members and supporters attended for what was a fun filled evening of good food, great camaraderie, and loads of door prizes, raffle prizes, and super auction items. The annual banquet is our one big fund raiser of the year and, while final figures aren’t in yet, we grossed somewhere in the mid to high twenty thousands. A huge thanks to all of you who made that possible!

This year’s banquet offered over a hundred door prizes, silent and live auction items, and raffle prizes of all sorts and sizes. Although TU is sometimes (erroneously) thought of as a “fishing” organization, we’re not; we’re a conservation minded group with a focus on wild and native trout. As such, there was a wide variety of goodies to choose from beyond the fishing related stuff: outdoor gear, food, getaways, artwork, clothing, exotic trips, even packages for golfers and skiers. Plenty of opportunities to place a bid or buy a chance and leave a winner. There was even one guaranteed prize winner at each table (a custom made wooden box by our own master woodworker and FVTU board member, Bob Holley).

The raft raffle is our big draw with a fully equipped raft (frame, oars, seats) being awarded to some lucky winner each year. This year we gave away a 14′ NRS Slipstream. Traditionally we start selling tickets at the Montana Sportsman’s Expo each February with sales continuing right up until it’s time to draw the winner. There is almost always a great story associated with the winning ticket, but this year’s is one of the best. Our lucky winner was Shannon Stahon. She and her husband Dan were at the banquet celebrating their 1st wedding anniversary! If I remember correctly, the traditional first wedding anniversary gift is paper. I guess the raft raffle ticket counts as paper! Not only that, but Dan won the half day float with Glacier Anglers in the Hat Raffle! Way to go Shannon and Dan! A “couple” of winners for sure.

Over at the Live Auction we once again had a wide variety of higher end goodies with our premier offering, a 5 day, 4 night fishing trip on the upper Middle Fork of the Flathead River in the Bob Marshall Wilderness. Donated to us by Glacier Anglers, this is a once-in-a-lifetime type trip that any serious fisherman or adventurer would enjoy. Valued at over $11,500 dollars it ended up going for a significantly discounted price. If you weren’t there, you missed out. We’ve been fortunate to offer this package almost every year so join us next year and maybe YOU could be taking the backcountry trip of a lifetime.

Our Silent Auction was again all on-line bidding, while our Bucket Raffle followed our new format of fewer, but nicer items per bucket. Both were big hits as you’d expect.

The annual banquet is also a chance for us to recognize those whom we are most indebted to. This year we honored long time FVTU board member Lucky Sultz. Lucky is technically our Conservation Chairman, but he is so much more than that. Easily recognizable by his full white beard and bushy eyebrows, Lucky is there at every FVTU function. You’ve seen him at the Sportsman’s Expo, veterans floats, fly tying classes, FAS cleanups, regular meetings; well, just about everywhere. What you don’t see is that he’s often been working in the background getting things set up, handling the audio-visual equipment, and smoothing out the rough spots. As conservation chair he has authored any number of letters to the editor and other correspondence to the powers-to-be, succinctly stating our position on issues ranging from oil trains to invasive species. He is a quiet, driving force behind what we do. Thanks Lucky for all those years of service to our cause.

There were lots of new faces at this year’s banquet and lots of younger faces as well. Plus, a high percentage of ladies in the crowd. All good ,and exactly what FVTU needs to stay healthy and relevant into the future. If this was your first FVTU banquet we hope you had a really good time and will join us again next year. More than that, we hope you’ll be a regular at our monthly meetings and pitch in from time to time when the call goes out for volunteers.

We can’t say “thank you” enough to the many people who helped make our banquet a success. If you attended and were impressed that we had all of our ducks in a row, I can tell you, as a former “duck”, there was a lot of paddling going on below the surface. If I try to list everyone who pitched in I know I’ll miss a few names, so let me just generally thank all of the FVTU board members and the many additional FVTU volunteers who helped out. Huge thanks also to our many generous sponsors who chipped in with merchandise, significant discounts, or outright cash.

The process starts long before banquet night with arranging the facility, the meals, sponsors, rounding up auction and raffle items, getting the word out, and so on and so forth. It is truly a group effort. I do feel that a couple of people should be singled out however. FVTU President Wade Fredenberg, for his leadership and commitment to the cause. Former board president Dan Short, “Mr. Banquet“. Dan’s been the banquet chair since before I was born, and that’s pretty tricky since I’m older than him. I don’t think there’s a single individual more responsible for the success of our banquets over the past couple of decades than Dan, we owe him a lot! Mike Cooney of Glacier Anglers. Mike and Glacier Anglers have been long time friends and supporters of FVTU. Year after year they’ve been our source for the raft we raffle off and have graciously donated a wilderness float trip again and again. That’s only what you see. They’ve helped out in many other ways as well. A big tip of the hat and a standing ovation to all of them and everyone else who worked on the 2025 banquet.

Well, that closes the book on another year. As you know by now, FVTU takes an annual hiatus to enjoy our beautiful, albeit short, summer and get in some fishing. Regular general membership meetings will start up again in the fall. In the mean time, your FVTU board isn’t idle. Over the next few months (in between fishing trips) they’ll be planning next year’s programs and dealing with new issues that crop up and old ones that are continuing to threaten our native species and the cold, clear, connected waters they need to survive.

Don’t be a stranger. Come to the meetings, get involved, volunteer, enjoy your time with FVTU. We’re always looking for interested folks to join the board. Now…., did I remember to patch those waders over the winter? Guess I’ll find out pretty quick.

See you on the river!