So I woke up this morning happy to see no rain. So I got my gear together, checked the DNR website to make sure I knew where I was going and was off to Delafield. The stream had no name and I still cannot find it, but was supposed to have bowfin, gar, stonerollers, common shiners, and darters. That is a good start for me. So I headed out. I got there and saw a car parked on the opposite side of the road. I was afraid that if someone was there fishing, I wouldn't be able to do what I wanted. So I walked around and found no one.



So I decided to start fishing. I took a tiny hook, put a split shot and a small red worm on there. I found a small tree down in the river and saw a ton of 4-8" fish behind it, figuring I could catch something. And I was right. Here I caught the majority of the fish I caught for the day.

I saw a ton of 1-3" small mouth and caught one on rod:

Then I was catching tons of these (hornyhead chubs?)



Then I started to catch common shiners:


I also did a little rock flipping for darters.. I had seen a bunch of LARGE Rainbows, couple looked to be orangethoats as the coloring from above was slightly different but I wasn't able to catch any of these. I had also seen some bandeds (wasn't able to catch) and another two I thought I ID'd correctly from above the water, but they eluded me. I saw definely what looked like a Gilt Darter and another that really reminded me of Redline Darters, but those are native and Gilts are extremely rare (so I have heard...)

I also saw some stonerollers that were eaily 10" long.. they were in a little bit deeper water and couldn't get a shot or catch them... must have been because I wasn't wearing my copper colored shirt, orange and white arm bands, and my sombrero with spikes on it... oh well.

All in all I caught roughly 20 or so of the "hornyhead chubs", 5 common shiners, 3 rainbow darters, 100 crayfish, one smallmouth, and 20 or so blackbanded topminnows. I will definately be taking my wife back for the bowfin/smallmouth fishing (didn't see any bowfin...)

That's great!! Looks like a really nice quiet spot with quite a bit of variety. Those are hornyhead chubs.

red spot behind the eye is indicitive of a spawning male hornyhead

The pictures I had were of non breeding fish, which I thought the breeding males had the red spot and the "spikes"

Thanks for confirming my ID!

well those fish want to breed lol

I am excited as we are going back fishin at this location this weekend and then possibly to a longear and orangspott location also... supposedly there are orange spots at this location, but I didn't see any place where I would think they would be.

I am excited as we are going back fishin at this location this weekend and then possibly to a longear and orangspott location also... supposedly there are orange spots at this location, but I didn't see any place where I would think they would be.

The orangespots will be in a slowly flowing part of the stream, maybe a meter deep, in open water close to dense vegetation. Turbidity is no problem for them.

Thanks! I go fishing in a few rivers that are supposed to have quite a few, but have yet to see one ... it is one of my goal fish for this year (along with bowfin and longears.) I actually just caught a gar in that river last night (was about 8") so knocked another off the list.

I must admit, with all of your guys help, it is really making it easy to find these fish.