Our main targets were: Mottled or Banded Sculpin (we knew sculpins were there, just not which species) and Missouri Saddled Darter (we had no idea if they were in this stream or not....and we did not find any today).
We started out microfishing, and within seconds we were both catching all the Bleeding Shiners we wanted (on size 22 hooks tipped with worm for me, size 20 tipped with pink trout bait for him). Aside from an Ozark Minnow later in the morning, Bleeding Shiners were the only fish we successfully caught on hooks today.
I had to be home by 12:30pm, so we spent the bulk of our time seining.
Minnows were easy to come by, as were Orangethroat and Rainbow Darters. We managed a single Mottled Sculpin. Slender Madtoms were everywhere. I ended up being able to bring home some nice fish, and left the bulk of them in the creek!
Here's a list of the species we seined in no particular order (from memory....I may be missing some, and others we didn't take the time to ID as our turnaround time approached):
- Bleeding Shiner
- Orangethroat Darter
- Rainbow Darter
- Ozark Minnow
- Mottled Sculpin
- Slender Madtom
- Northern Studfish
- Plains Topminnow
- Fantail Darter
- Largescale Stoneroller (maybe, not sure. See photo below)
- Southern Redbelly Dace (only one individual all morning!)
The first microfishing catch of the day was this Bleeding Shiner:
We were both pretty excited when we found our first Golden Crayfish, but the novelty soon wore off. Every seine net had multiple crayfish.
A pair of Rainbow Darters:
A nice male Rainbow Darter from a deeper part of the same riffle as above:
Neither one of us saw this Northern Studfish until we lifted our net, so we were both pretty excited when we saw him flopping around. Later, we tried to microfish this species with no luck.
We knew Fantail Darters were a possibility, but I didn't really expect to find one. I think we ended up with ~10 seined by the end of the day. Far outnumbered by Rainbow and Orangethroat.
I had never managed to see a madtom (of any species) until today. I was beside myself when we seined our first (about 1 1/2" long), and by the end of the day we'd seined close to 20 individuals. They all appeared to be Slender Madtoms.
A typical haul from a 10 ft. section of riffle:
This is one of the guys we pulled on our third-to-last seine. We had four or five in the seine. My best guess is Largescale Stoneroller, but I'm wide open for other suggestions if anyone has any. This is the only photo I took before she flopped into the stream.
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