POCATELLO — Newly appointed Idaho Fish and Game regional fisheries manager Dave Teuscher has a lot of projects on his radar.
One of his goals is to create an urban fishery in the Gate City.
Officials have long discussed that possibility — usually with the Highway Pond near Century High School as the likely candidate — but Teusher said there are other locations that could also work.
Teuscher took over Monday for longtime fisheries manager Richard Scully, who retired last week.
“We’re trying to work with the city folks to get a spot for first time anglers closer to home,” Teuscher said.
However, he declined to name any of the possible locations until one is actually chosen.
Teuscher has been with Fish and Game for 10 years. Before that, he worked with the Shoshone-Bannock Tribe on a sockeye salmon recovery program in the early 1990s. He then moved to Montana, where he spent a year as a fisheries biologist in the Helena area.
Teuscher returned to the Gem State for a job as an Idaho Fish and Game hatchery trout researcher in Jerome.
“We were working to develop a methodology to treat rainbow (trout) eggs to make them steril,” Teuscher said. “That way we could stock rainbow trout without having an impact on the native trout species.”
Teuscher started his job as the Southeast Region’s fisheries biologist under the direction of Scully in 2001. In that capacity, Teuscher said he has further worked to ensure the survival of native trout, such as the cutthroat.
In fact, the Bonneville Cutthroat variety exists only in Teuscher’s jurisdiction, within the Bear River watershed.
Among his many projects with that trout variety, Teuscher has worked with landowners along St. Charles Creek, the Cub River and other streams, to install special fish screens which prevent cutthroat them from being sucked into irrigation systems.
“It’s a challenging, but an exciting step,” Teuscher said of his promotion. “Richard was great to work for because he involved me in evey aspect of the job. The last several years have given me the opportunity to learn lots of details about the fisheries management in this area. I have a really good understanding of the resources we have here and that’s really inportant.”
Scully did not return calls seeking comment for this story.