Snorkling, sampling, fishing, in recent weeks I did it all. I'll start with this report on the most recent of them, snorkling, as I got my best underwater photos from it.
I figured out how to get decent photos and video of minnows. Just stir up dirt or flip rocks with your hands and they swarm right in.
I went to my usual spot for snorkling near the mills in Swanzey in the Ashuelot. The first thing I did was toss a grasshopper into the river curius to see if a fish would eat it. After three attempts a fish finally got it.
Their was an unusual amount of crayfish their including some so large they made me hesitant to enter the water. The big ones had large claws with bumps on them.
Their were minnows everywhere, Even before I saw them. (a few pics I snapped of the crayfish on entering the water also had minnows in them before cropping them down).
I also saw one large tesselate darter scoot off to avoid a big crayfish. I wonder what happened to the groups of darters found here earlier in the year.
On the edge of the minnow school lurked an outsider. Someone who occasionally darted forth for a meal but mostly held back. A small largemouth bass,
I also very very briefly saw a small yellow perch, but it was gone as soon as I saw it.
It's odd, in all my time sampling here I have yet to net a bass or perch and this is the first time I saw them at this location in the river. Sampling I have caught yellow bullhead, red breast sunfish, blacknose dace, and longnose dace in this spot but have yet to see them while snorkling here. It also seems their are different fishes here later in the year than their were earlier, odd.
As i said I had alot of minnow photos. Luring them in by stirring up food allowed me to get pictures that were better than a blur. Most were fallfish but a couple look like common shiners.
that is a zoom in close up of the minnow in the foreground in this image to show the detail and color.
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