Ray Wetzel and I (Bob Hicks) are putting together a sampling / collecting trip to the northern part of the New Jersey pine barrens for Sept.7th. We plan on sampling Bunker Hill Bog, Horicon Lake and Pine Lake near Lakehurst, NJ. If you're interested in joining us, please e-mail me rchicks at optonline dot com.

On past trips, Horicon Lake has always had good populations of the dwarf sunfish Blackbanded, Banded, and Bluespotted. However, when we visited this spot in the spring, the numbers seemed to be way down, and I noticed there were far less floating plants than normal. We were told that the water level in the lake had been lowered by a lot last winter. I'm looking forward to getting back to see if the populations have recovered (fingers crossed).

I'd be up for this trip would love some NJ black banded. Emailed you as well.

Always a fun time! Count me in!

I am debating if I should go or not. I don't really need any sunfish though at the moment.

We had a great day - the weather was perfect and the fish sampling was very productive.
I posted a trip report in the trip reports forum.

Special thanks to NANFA members Mike (keepnatives) and Josh (FirstChAoS) who joined us and shared their enthusiasm and experience. I'm pretty sure we'll be seeing a couple of new members as a result.