Wading waist deep in the Vermillion River, they waited with their nets poised.

A mild electric current flowed through the water, and stunned fish floated to the surface.

"Alright, you guys. Let's go get 'em," said Brian Nerbonne, the DNR trout stream habitat specialist who led the recent "electrofishing" expedition.

First, some suckers. Then, a northern. Finally, the one they wanted: a big brown trout, 23 inches long and weighing four to five pounds.

Scott County Commissioner Tom Wolf scooped it up.

"They get that big?" Wolf said, surprised at his catch.

"Apparently," said Todd Matzke, of the Dakota County Soil and Water Conservation District.

The Vermillion River, a catch-and-release stream, is famous for its whopping trout. The cool spring-fed river, which meanders from eastern Scott County to the Mississippi River at Hastings, is also known for its environmental challenges -- excess sediment, pollutants from runoff and rising water temperatures that threaten the trout. The fishing expedition last week, part of a tour of the river by county commissioners and watershed officials, was meant to check how the trout in the stream were doing.

Restoring the river after years of degradation has been at the heart of conservation in Dakota County.

The county's Farmland and Natural Areas Program has paid for conservation easements along the stream, and plans for future management of the area are in the works.

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources has launched projects to return curves to a section of the river straightened long ago, and it worked with the University of Minnesota Extension Service to plant riparian buffers with a variety of trees to lend shade to the river in hopes of cooling it.

In 2002, Dakota and Scott counties formed the Vermillion River Watershed organization, which draws funding from a special taxing district, to manage resources and water conservation in the area. In the past year, the group has contributed $592,700 to 22 projects within the watershed.

"It's a very valuable resource that runs smack dab through the middle of our county," said Dakota County Commissioner Joe Harris.

Most of the river runs through private property, and the watershed around it spans 335 square miles and touches 20 different cities and townships. It's a big project, being tackled in bits and pieces.

"It took 150 years to put the Vermillion River in the shape that it is in," Harris said. "We're not going to solve it overnight."

Instead, the watershed organization is tackling one voluntary project at a time.

Some, like the stabilization of an eroding ravine in the Hastings industrial park, have immediate results.

The project, which cost the watershed organization $125,000 and the city of Hastings $284,065, cleared up water that had been draining into the river looking like chocolate milk, officials said.

Across the river, ConAgra has paired with the watershed organization to create a swale and basin to filter and capture water that used to run directly from the mill's parking lot to the river.

On a farm in rural Vermillion Township, a project that repaired a gully to control sediment eliminates about 23 tons of soil loss -- sediment that would flow toward the Vermillion River -- annually.

"It gives reason for optimism," Dakota County Board Chairman Tom Egan said after touring the sites.

Still, the electrofishing outing proved there is still more to do. At the end of the afternoon, the group had netted just two trout, and neither appeared to be fish hatched this year.

Nerbonne, of the DNR, said the number of "young of the year" is an important indicator of a reproducing trout population.

"That's less than we usually get at this stretch," Nerbonne said, wondering aloud if the high water this spring and summer prevented young trout from surviving. "This is probably not a very good year."

Katie Humphrey • 952-882-9056