NANFA-- Downtown Toledo Outing, enhanced with Kidz (tm)

Todd Crail (farmertodd_at_buckeye-express.com)
Tue, 20 Apr 2004 18:58:29 -0400

<snip> 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?" :)
</snip>

Well... Survey says?

"This is the best field trip I've ever been on!"
- Little Girl, whom I can't remember her name

Everything went well, actually, better than I even expected. It would have
been nice if it were a little bit warmer. The kids were freezing and they
were still engaged the entire time. Emerald shiner scales were a big hit.
So were sucker lips and crayfish. Ew gross! :) Tomorrow I go into the after
school program and play Jack Hannah. I'm going to take these fish and then
some of their more colorful upstream counterparts.

On the final seine haul, we must have pulled 20lbs of emerald shiners. It
was a mess to sort through. I almost wished we'd used an 8' seine and made
a couple passes, but I didn't want to miss the big white suckers that were
spawning right while we were there. Needless to say, I wasn't about to
check each one to see if there were any silver shiners in the mix. ;)

And everyone started out saying "There's nothing that lives in that!! It's
polluted!!" That would be the kids, the adults, the UT students. I love
blowing minds :)

I threw together a few pics here:
http://www.farmertodd.com/nanfa/042004ottawa/index.htm

I'll do a more formal report after I have tomorrow's pics. This was a lot
of fun, and I think everyone walked away feeling that. :)

Equipment: 25' Purse Seine
Collectors: Hans Gottgens, Brian, Ed, Todd Crail
Temp: 57 F
Stain from recent phytoplankton bloom. About 50 JTU.
Note: Only sampled open stream habitat in 3 hauls. Did not work into
rocks, undercuts and snags to look for sunfish. There were many log jams
downstream that would have been the right habitat.

Fish List:
Campostoma anomalum - central stoneroller ~5
Semotilus atromaculatus - creek chub ~5
Pimephales notatus - bluntnose minnow ~50
Pimephales promelas - fathead minnow ~5
Phenacobius mirabilis - suckermouth minnow 1
Notemigonus crysoleucas - golden shiner ~5
Cyprinella spiloptera - spotfin shiner ~10
Notropis atherinoides - emerald shiner Abundant, by the pound
Campostoma commersoni - white sucker 2
Percina caprodes - logperch ~10
Percina maculata - blackside darter 1
Etheostoma nigrum - johnny darter 2

It's never too late to have a happy childhood.
http://www.farmertodd.com
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