NANFA-- Borden, Macon and hopefully downtown Toledo

Todd Crail (toddcrail_at_yahoo.com)
Tue, 20 Apr 2004 05:09:26 -0700 (PDT)

I enjoyed the write ups Bruce and Steven. I really liked the web format of the Macon trip too Steven.

Saturday we did some sampling on the Ottawa again for our dam removal project. There were some extra grad students along... One fella had done his masters on isopods and was looking for bugs. We ended up going out the whole rest of the day collecting, looking at bugs, fish, critters, plants. I can't wait to start school. I said "anthropogenic" and "eutrophic" in the same sentence and didn't have to explain anything. That and I didn't have to explain why mayflies are a good thing, not a bad thing. It's was kinda like "Hi Honey, I'm home!" :)

This afternoon, weather permitting, we'll be taking out some inner city kiddos that are part of an after school program another friend of mine at the Univerisity places her kids in. They wanted to do this whole "Finding Nemo" kinda thing. I said "Well hows about finding him in Toledo and not Australia, huh, so maybe we can generate some city pride?" :)

Should be interesting to see what we find down there. It's got the orange biofilm "rust" that says "I am waaaaay over enriched". I fish watched there last Friday. There were probably about 30 large male white suckers hanging out in the riffle. Man they were beat up, I'm hoping that we can get at least one that hasn't been in the action so much.

Todd

Bruce Stallsmith <fundulus_at_hotmail.com> wrote:
This didn't work out as a NANFA trip, but I spent yesterday seining in
Borden Creek in the Bankhead National Forest in north 'bama. It was actually
a research trip, since I have permission to collect and keep burrhead
(Notropis asperifrons) and silverstripe (N. stilbius) shiners from the site
as a study to determine their reproductive cycles and (hopefully) food
habits. We had a big group: myself, my sweetie Ruth, a graduate student
doing the project, 2 undergrads, and 3 river divers I work with who were
curious about collecting fish in a small, clear creek (very different from
the Tennessee River!).

So I demonstrated to even more people the art of darter dancing, to chase
fish into a stationary seine net held in a riffle system. We quickly
collected our quota of 20 silverstripes but had to really dig to catch even
10 burrheads in 4 hours. That alone is a datum of sorts, that there are WAY
more silverstripes than burrheads in this stretch of riffles and pools.

We also caught other interesting fishes. Tuskaloosa darters are in spawning
coloration, with the males exhibiting the weirdest, deep turquoise on their
ventral side that I've ever seen, along with bright red tails. The
stonerollers are in season now too, and no one else in my group had ever
seen a fully tuberculate stoneroller male so that was fun to show off
stonerollers (still one of my fave minnows). None of them had ever seen a
longear sunfish in full color either, another impressive sight. And we
caught 2 half-grown Alabama hogsuckers as an example of very dedicated mouth
shape.

Other darters included muscadine, warrior, Mobile logperch and redspot (only
2 females of the latter, I would think they'd be in color now). We also
flushed some redhorse but they were only large flashes going by...

This will be a monthly trip, so I'll try to announce it next time if anyone
wants to join us. (Sorry Stott!)

--Bruce Stallsmith
Huntsville, AL, US of A
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/"Unless stated otherwise, comments made on this list do not necessarily
/ reflect the beliefs or goals of the North American Native Fishes
/ Association"
/ This is the discussion list of the North American Native Fishes Association
/ nanfa_at_aquaria.net. To subscribe, unsubscribe, or get help, send the word
/ subscribe, unsubscribe, or help in the body (not subject) of an email to
/ nanfa-request_at_aquaria.net. For a digest version, send the command to
/ nanfa-digest-request_at_aquaria.net instead.
/ For more information about NANFA, visit our web page, http://www.nanfa.org