7 replies to this topic

[Michael Wolfe]

On Saturday, the day before father's day, I coerced my 20 year old, sometimes NANFA participant, son to accompany Doug and I on a trip to South Georgia to search the Ohoopee River by seine and dipnet. It was a perfect day. Rains from Wednesday had not swelled nor clouded the river, and we arrived at the designated location to find an absolutely clear, tea colored shallow flow. Upstream from the bridge where we first wet our nets...

Downstream, the flow slowed, the sandy banks widened, and deeper holes developed. The trees trunks widened too, as the dominant cover below the bridge are buttressed trunked cypress...

Approaching the water, we were immediately rewarded with a wealth of visible fish. Dragging a seine through clear (tea colored, but very clear) water, with visible fish, in the hot Georgia sun... this is my kind of collecting. And we did very well for a flat south Georgia stream. We saw chain pickerel and dollar sunfish... blackbanded darters and dusky shiners... over a dozen species by the time we were done (remember this is south Georgia, not a mountain stream, we were quite pleased).

One of the jewels of this stream was certainly the silversides. I have never seen so many silversides in my whole life put together as I saw Saturday. And what silversides they were. Should have been called, red mouthed, neon lime green mini-torpedo fish! These were abundant and fantastic, but knowing their reputation, I only snapped a quick phototank shot or two and put them back, to hopefully recover. I know this is not a typical portrait, but I didn't want to stress these slender zippy, beauties any more than necessary to capture their grace and intensity. What a shame that these gentle gems don't do better in aquaria.

And of course, we were successful in finding and photoing our target fish for the day. In fact, although I have saved it for last, our target was abundant and specimens were observed in the very first seine-haul. So eye-candy for the trip was the Ohoopee Shiner, AKA the Leeds Shiner, AKA the Bannerfin Shiner... that is Cyprinella leedsi.

We had done so well, that we had time to check out another location... one that some of my Georgia buddies will know... over bit into the Ogeechee River drainage. This location is interesting in that we get stream fishes like yellwofin shiners and bluehead chubs... and this time even a juvenile redhorse, in the same location that we get more typical swampy type fish such as pirate perch and redfin pickerel. All of these were available and our guest from Florida was able to finally experience some yellowfins before heading back south. A great day in South and Middle Georgia. Only two locations, but both with abundant and varied fish. And of course, for me, the day before fathers day in the water with my son on the other brail...

[Michael Wolfe]

Wow, that bannerfin looks a lot like a whitefin shiner, C. nivea. I recall the fired up males as having a much more pronounced dorsal and tubercles running up the nape. Maybe this guy was just on his way up or down. Very nice fish.

Not a whitefin... at least the handbooks say, the whitefin has the dark spot on the back of his dorsal... the bannerfin on the very front edge... here is a picture of the same fish in the same water taken just a minute before. The only difference is the background. I originally has a clear divider in the phototank. But as you can see from the photo, I was not getting enough definition between the tannin stained water and white background to be able to see his white tipped tail and such. So I added my grey divider from the other phototank. Instantly, I got the iridescent coloration on the dorsal fin. I was very surprised to see it, but really liked the picture with the grey background better than the one with the clear (which turned yellow with the white tank and tannins in the water).


And talking about iridescent colors, I was also surprised to see the differences between individuals... this one guy was very dark... navy blue on his line... another fish was much lighter colored... almost skyblue (like I am expecting the bluestripe shiner to be when we hopefully see them next weekend). There seems to be a lot of reflected color on these fish and bucket, phototank, water color, heck maybe even overhead sky color seem to make the look different.


Anyway, thanks for the compliment, and I would agree that these fish were definitely not in the full blown highest of high breeding states...