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Fantail Darters in Indiana


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#1 Guest_Draros_*

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Posted 17 March 2013 - 04:27 PM

A friend of mine is trying to develop a distribution of fantails in Indiana. This weekend he had a series of unsuccessful trips going up Southwestern Indiana and the Northeastern part of Indiana. Has anyone happened to collect fantails in the state? From personal experience I am fairly confident Southwestern Indiana lacks cobble streams, if you know of one however I would love to know where it is. However, Northeastern Indiana had idea habitat and he still didn't manage to find any fantails. Anyone know any sites within the state to find them?

Thanks

#2 Guest_BenCantrell_*

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Posted 17 March 2013 - 04:40 PM

Slightly outdated distribution map from 1945.

Posted Image

Source - "The Distribution of the Fishes of Indiana
by Shelby D. Gerking,
Indiana University
From: Investigations of Indiana Lakes and Streams Volume 3
Indiana Department of Conservation, Indianapolis and
Indiana University, Department of Zoology, Bloomington
1945"

#3 Guest_gunner48_*

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Posted 17 March 2013 - 06:09 PM

I have collected Fantails, just last summer, in Southeastern Indiana. My family has a farm in Switzerland County and it borders a stream called Indian Creek. Indian creek runs through the middle of the county, going east to west and then turns to the south, and empties into the Ohio River, so it is not a very long stream. This creek can have a lot of water and be almost completely dry during droughts. The fantails are the only darters I have found in our stretch of the creek. The stream bed is mostly slab bedrock in our section and it is difficult to catch fantails when the creek is running has they hide under the slab rock. The fantails are very easy to catch when the water gets low and the darters are trapped in pools. He might have better luck waiting till low water season. The last few years have been droughty so there not has many darters has I used to find.

#4 Guest_centrarchid_*

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Posted 22 March 2013 - 06:28 AM

Many streams in Perry county support fantails and they are easy to find in most stream to east. An isolated population was in a spring fed stream on our family farm in Spencer county many years ago. They survived a bout of strip mining but populations downstream of site where prone to dry out during low water years making so detection of darters sporadic. This year will be a bad one for the recovering Little Pigeon drainage. Last site was a tributary to Little Pigeon Creek. Streams of southwestern Indiana vary greatly with respect to reach where quality habitats are small and isolated. They are not uniformly muddy bottomed.

Some of the more eastern populations are what I would call "fantailish". I am not a taxonomist of darters but that is something that needs looking into. The eastern populations have color, not just shades of grey.

#5 Guest_Dustin_*

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Posted 22 March 2013 - 06:53 AM

That fish sounds interesting. Do you happen to have any photos?

#6 Guest_ttravisbrown_*

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Posted 09 May 2013 - 02:32 PM

They are abundant in Silver Creek (Clark County) and Mosquito Creek (Harrison County) in southcentral IN, but I haven't found them much west of that. I have sampled Pigeon Creek (Evansville area), and the only darter I found was the slough darter (E. gracile).



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