My buddy Glenn and I ventured to a creek that we often fish for smallmouth bass that is about 40 minutes from where I live to break in my new 6' seine (purchased 2 years ago but just now getting around to using it). The both of us had to learn a few things. First, where were the fish. Second, the best techniques for getting fish into the net. The purpose of this trip was to gain practice in netting fish, and bring some fish home.
The water was very cold, and while wading the creek, we saw just a couple fish spooked as we walked along disturbing rocks, as most of the fish were either hiding under rocks and leaves, or in much deeper water. My buddy had chest waders on, but I had only hip boots on, limiting some of the areas that we could try. There was more water in the creek than either of us suspected. They must have had more rain out West of us than we did.
I brought along a cultivator (like a three pronged rake, for those that don't know what it is) to help move bigger rocks. I use this device often while fossil collecting for just that purpose. The idea was to try the kicking shuffling method, but also use the cultivator. We started out in moderate current, about a foot deep, in a spot that had what looked like the right rocks for darters to hide. My main goal was to get a few more darters. Our first attempts were futile...nothing.
So, we tried deeper and slower water nearby, and we had instant success. On our first attempt, we caught what I thought was a tessellated darter, but upon closer inspection later, was a greenside darter. On our subsequent attempts, as we improved out techniques, we caught more darters. I really wanted at least one female rainbow darter, and we succeeded with that, getting three of those. We also caught fantail darters, and a couple more male rainbow darters for my tank.
We tried finding minnows in leaves, and with some success, hauled in several species, some that went into my tank. We brought back a few silverjaw minnows, some spottail shiners, one creek chub, a couple rosyside dace, and a large longnose dace. We also caught blacknosed dace, a northern hogsucker, several small sunfish that were in leaves along the deeper bank in slow water. Overall, it was a really fun and successful afternoon trip.
On my next outing, I think that I'm going to try to find some plants for my tank. This creek had some hydrilla, but I'm going to pass on that plant. I'll post pics and vids of my fish later once they are used to the tank. I brought home more fish than I had planned, so I need to be johnny on the spot with water changes to make up for the increased bioload.
Here are some pics:
Scenery shots of the creek where we collected:
Me, manning the seine.
Glenn, in between attempts.
One of the many juvenile sunfish that we caught in leaves near the bank. I suspect that they were juvenile bluegills. But, the predominant sunnie species in this creek is redbreast sunfish, so maybe they were redbreast. The tails were pretty orange, not evident in this photo though. I didn't keep any of the sunfish.
Northern hogsucker, released.
Not sure what this is. Central stoneroller or creek chubsucker maybe? We released it.
Here's a video explaining our catch. As it turns out, we didn't get any rosyface shiners or tessellated darters on this trip. But, the rest is pretty accurate. What fun we had!
NANFA Youtube Channel 
