No, not Big Foot; Stephen! After months of trying to get together and failing, I was beginning to think Stephen was just a NANFA myth. Turns out he's not a myth; he's just elusive! The two of us finally managed to get together and hit the streams this past Sunday afternoon. I had a great time getting to meet him and poke around in some different waters.
Our "goal", such as it was, was to see if we could find Christmas darters in Three and Twenty Creek, Anderson County, SC. Really, I think we both just wanted an excuse to meet up and get our feet wet. We first tried a spot on Three and Twenty that we thought lined up with known collection spots for E. hopkinsi. As Stephen predicted, the water was quite high and fast. Not unworkable, but not productive either. We splashed around for well over an hour, trying all different types of cover in the stream, and only came up with one sad looking madtom and some tiny redbreast sunfish. Most disappointing was that, despite our assurances to the contrary, neither one of us proved prone to falling down in the water. At least that would have been exciting...
We gave up on Three and Twenty and determined to try a couple of its tribs. First stop was Little Garvin Creek. Despite the fact that LGC is guarded by a crack commando squad of Clemson University's Elite Bovine Guard, who are stationed at a C.U. experimental farm bordering the stream, we accessed the water and got to work. The little trib had much more accommodating water. We turned up margined madtoms (Noturus insignis), speckled madtoms (Noturus leptacanthus), and some gambusia. A couple white tubercled crayfish (Procambarus spiculifer) turned up as well. Here are some pics.
Unfortunately, the Bovine Guard declined a photo request. The speckleds were a new life fish for me, and the cray was pretty dang cool, so I was happy.
Our last stop was Cuffie Creek. Definitely not on my return trip agenda, and probably not Stephen's, either. Not that there was much wrong with it, except for accessing it through orange, discolored, stagnant water; sediment that sucked one in all the way up to their thighs, and the pungent summer aroma of something big and dead decaying just out of sight. Footprints indicated the area to host a population of racoons roughly the size of bison. (There is the possibility said tracks actually belonged to beavcoons...) Still, being NANFAns, we wallowed ahead. Our reward was a bumper crop of yellow bullheads, a couple redbreasts, several gambusia, and the joy of unintentionally giving a lost senior citizen and her young granddaughters very incorrect directions... There was also this little dude, who we decided was probably a rosyface chub (Hybopsis rubrifons).
So, as you can tell by the tone of this post, while we might not have turned up much in the line of diversity or numbers, we had a really fun time. And that is every bit as important as the first two considerations.
Plus, it's really good to know Stephen is an actual living, breathing person and not a myth. Now to prove Dustin is real, and not the stuff of NANFA lore...
NANFA Youtube Channel 
