5 replies to this topic

[Sean Phillips]

Finally, made the first successful collecting trip of this year! Stared slow but found a hole that I Seined about 30-40 fish out in one sweep! Picked up 3 Redside dace and 3 Silverjaw minnows to increase my school numbers and found two new species to that spot. One was a Bluntnose minnow which I'd never seen there before. But then there's this one which I only caught one of and I'm thinking central Stoneroller, what are your thoughts? Caught in a feeder stream in southwestern PA.
 image.jpg   80.24KB   2 downloads

[BenCantrell]

Yup, central stoneroller.

[Matt DeLaVega]

Yes. Maybe with more work on your end, your streams hold more species than you had thought.

[Sean Phillips]

Yup, central stoneroller.

Awesome! Good thing I stuck around, I've been looking for one so I put it in a minnow bucket and am just wrapping up fishing now so I think I'll keep it . Caught 2 creek chubs on standard gear, forgot to bring my small flies for microfishing sadly. Any idea what to feed them? I'm thinking start it on live blackworms then transition to frozen mysis, bloodworms, and spirulina. Any chance I could eventually get them on algae wafers?

[Sean Phillips]

Yes. Maybe with more work on your end, your streams hold more species than you had thought.

This is definitely the most biodiverse spot I've found around me, other than the allegheny river weedbeds. So far I've logged a total of 11 species here and I'm sure one or two are eluding me. The first time I was there I though I spotted a stonecat but I can't be sure until I get the chance to examen one. Probably just a yellow bullhead.

It's mainly the well known and easily accessible streams that get abused by human activity. Only one or two other people know about this spot that just take a dozen or two minnows out every once in a while for bait so it's pretty well conserved. Though I worry for such a small spot how many fish can be harvested before it starts to harm the populations.

[Casper]

Stonerollers are a hardy, durable, interesting fish.  Great fish for an aquarium or pool.  Algae eaters, but will also eat flakes, frozen food, etc.  They grow big horns / turbecules and battle with each other in the early spring.  I call them armored bulldozers as the burrow into the gravel in and below runs making trenches and pits for the females eggs.  Bull males are often battered, scarred or dead by the end of the season.

We find Stonerollers even in urban, damaged stream here.  They need clean gravel to spawn and love all the algae from nutrient rich water, cows, fertilizers, etc.

At first it took me awhile to ID them but i can see from your photo the color, gnarrly scale appearance, head and underslung mouth that is a Stonie.  In the sun, while standing on the bank, they will flash silver while feeding and twisting their bodies.  Travel in like sized grazing herds.

A very important fish for flowing water systems.