>And ... this is always a real convenience ... thankfully the vehicle
> >didn't break down.
Me, too, mercifully.
>Plus, no live snakes were observed, so I'd guess we succeeded on one >of
>Bruce's major objectives as well.
Well, I'm more wigged out about cottonmouths than anything else. A
well-behaved rattlesnake is no real problem...
>Of the five kinds of fish I brought back:
> (1) no question about the F. olivaceus (x 2)
Yeah, I have four without-doubt olivaceus.
> (2) I'm 90% confident the fellers with the broad, (pale) black >stripe of
>uniform width are Coastal Shiners
You may be right.
>(3) Now that I can study them in the tank, the guys with the nice >orange
>fins definitely seem to be redhorses. However, they don't seem >to match up
>exactly with any of the pictures/maps in Peterson's, so >I'm going to have
>to read the book much more thoroughly.
At least a bunch of them are Notropis longirostris, Longnose Shiners. When I
woke up yesterday and the fog lifted, I realized that we had caught zillions
of them in the Yazoo drainage at the Mississippi convention last summer.
Males in breeding season (May/June) develop distinctly orange fins.
> (4) the "pale minners with the hint of blue sheen above and below" >have
>me stumped
I think you're talking about the ones with the black caudal spot(?)
including some fairly large individuals. If so, those are blacktail minnows,
Cyprinella venusta, that can get up to 7" long. I _knew_ they were
Cyprinella when I saw them but couldn't place them off the top of my head.
At least I knew they weren't Alabama shiners...
And other "pale minners" were probably silverjaw minnows, Ericymba buccata
(hey, has the genus changed on these guys?). I got home with 3 or 4 of these
guys, who are currently in a tank hiding out from my little Coosa bass.
Also, the one darter we caught (only one!) is a blackbanded darter, Percina
nigrofasciata if I remember right.
> (5) and I have one kinda skanky looking little black-striped minnow >guy,
>with a "dog-leg crook" to his underside starting at the ventral. >I'm
>calling him Egor, he kinda looks like that's what his relatives >probably
>already call him.
That one I don't remember...
I realize also that Colochee Creek was a monumentally blown-out creek. The
sand that Steven was talking about before was loose and filled what had
originally been rocky riffles to a depth of almost a meter. The sand banks
had that sculpted look sand usually only gets along high energy wave beaches
like the south shore of Nantucket. I think the fish we caught there were
random survivors of a devastating wash-out.
And thanks Doug, all of the Leptolucania made it home alive!
--Bruce Stallsmith
Huntsville, AL
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