Hey, no problem. I'm really a herp guy; I'm just starting to dabble in fish. I'm really enjoying these trip reports; a lot of the fish you've shown photos of I've only seen in jars.

The frog is a northern cricket frog, Acris crepitans. The subspecies of that group are more than a little arbitrary, but going by the guidebooks your frog would be a Blanchard's cricket frog, A. c. blanchardi. That subspecies will probably be synonymized with the nominate race before too much longer, though.

The turtle is an eastern spiny softshell, Apalone spinifera spinifera. The only other softshell in Illinois is the midland smooth softshell, A. mutica mutica, which lacks the carapacial tubercles and limb markings seen in your photo; additionally, smooth softshells have round nasal openings, while the spiny softshell has a septal ridge that makes the nasal openings C-shaped.

Thanks for that. You're pretty good with the herps. Could you help it out with the frog and turtle below too? I don't spend any time working on many things besides fish right now. I think I'm going to sign up for herpetology next semester at the university.

How much of the prairie is intact around this Mazon River? I think we're gonna have to have a multi-taxa weekend there in July or August.

Wow. Got your wetsuit yet Uland?

Brian, I'll take a look at the sucker stuff. I was more hoping to have it there to help me, but if there's something I can do, great. I've never e-fished so the only big suckers I typically catch are shortheads while walleye fishing.

Todd

I'd like to think I got pretty good at iding them this summer and made this key based on what I saw and what several reference books said including but not exclusively trautman and becker. I probably am somewhat lacking in counts, it is more of a looking at a live fish sort of key.

I don't see it in there Brian, that may be because I'm not a moderator any more.

Well, I just looked the aerials over that area of the Illinois, got the USGS guage marked. I'm ready to go. Like now. The proximity of that river to the Illinois is an amazing aspect. Who's in?

How many more weeks of winter? I'm going nutso.

Oh well, back to multivariate statistics. Nothing like lemon in the wound!

Todd

How much of the prairie is intact around this Mazon River? I think we're gonna have to have a multi-taxa weekend there in July or August.

Wow. Got your wetsuit yet Uland?

I'm in Todd. I should have all my new toys soon

I've sampled that area and it is aMAZing! I would suggest bringing a bulletproof vest/flak jacket though. Nate I will seek some more private details about this site.

Date: September 26, 2007
Location: Green River near Geneseo, IL. Downstream of SR 80. 2 miles upstream of the confluence of the Green River and the Rock River. (About 10 miles upstream of the confluence of the Rock River and the Mississippi River).
Water Level: Slightly higher than normal summer levels. Max depth in one of the pools was 2.2m. That pool had a small riffle right below it too.
Water Quality: Water was slightly turbid, the secchi didn’t reach all the way to the bottom in the deepest pool. The banks were highly eroded. There was modification to the shoreline and the riparian zone wasn’t much intact.
Water Temp.: 20*C
Substrate: Mostly sand bottom with silt and muck mixed in. Lots of flooded timber lined the shoreline, due to the erosion. A few small riffles had cobble and clean sand.
Collected:
Common Carp (Cyprinus carpio)
Western Gravel Chub (Erimystax x-punctatus x-punctatus) – found one on the cobble riffle directly below the largest pool in the sample.
Bluntnose Minnow (Pimephales notatus)
Bullhead Minnow (Pimephales vigilax) – lots of these here. We have found these in the highest densities when we are close to a large river.
Fathead Minnow (Pimephales promelas)
Spotfin Shiner (Cyprinella spiloptera) – very common.
Emerald Shiner (Notropis atherinoides) – very common, probably due to the proximity to the large river (the Rock River).
Sand Shiner (Notropis stramineus stramineus) – found hundreds of these around the clean sand that was directly below the large pool.
Black Buffalo (Ictiobus niger) – one really large one.
Smallmouth Buffalo (Ictiobus bubalus) – a few smaller ones.
Highfin Carpsucker (Carpiodes velifer) – found 30+ young of year ones in the large pool. Let me emphasize that when we hit this pool, there were hundreds of large fish that popped up. All the suckers we found were present in great numbers here.
River Carpsucker (Carpiodes carpio) – lots of really large ones were in that pool. This was my first time seeing these fish, but in rare form, we forgot to charge our camera batteries.
Northern Quillback (Carpiodes cyprinus cyprinus)
Golden Redhorse (Moxostoma erythrurum)
Silver Redhorse (Moxostoma anisurum)
Shorthead Redhorse (Moxostoma macrolepidotum) – lots of young of year ones found throughout the site.
Northern Hogsucker (Hypentelium nigricans) – only one.
Channel Catfish (Ictalurus punctatus) – lots of big ones were found near the fallen trees.
Flathead Catfish (Pylodictus olivaris) – just one.
Stonecat (Noturus flavus) – found one. This river didn’t really have much cobble and rock structure in current for Stonecats to utilize. I was surprised to see these here.
Western Banded Killifish (Fundulus diaphanus menona) – Brian captured one of these (although he saw a school of them) with a dipnet while waiting for Bob and I to finish the site. This capture of Western Banded Killifish would document a new population of them. According to the distribution charts (last time I checked) there is no representation of W. Banded Killifish in the Rock River drainage. This is important because they are a state threatened fish. Too bad we didn’t have our camera in working condition and our protocol didn’t allow for the preservation of state endangered or threatened species. Blackstripe Topminnow densities were low here as well, this might have allowed for the Banded Killifish population to flourish. Here's a map of the distribution of the Western Banded Killifish in Illinois. I added the pink dot to show approximately where our collection site was. I also drew a line to it and it was supposed to have some text, but the text didn't show up for some reason. (The map is provided by the Illinois Natural History Survey website Illinois Natural History Survey - Fish Collection - Homepage )

Blackstipe Topminnow (Fundulus notatus) - only a few.
Western Mosquitofish (Gambusia affinis) – a few.
Northern Smallmouth Bass (Micropterus dolomieu dolomieu) – lots of smaller ones.
Bluegill (Lepomis macrochirus macrochirus)
Green Sunfish (Lepomis cyanellus)
Orangespotted Sunfish (Lepomis humilis)
Slenderhead Darter (Percina phoxocephala) – just one.
Banded Darter (Etheostoma zonale) – a couple were found on the small riffle.
Johnny Darter (Etheostoma nigrum)
Freshwater Drum (Aplodinotus grunniens) – a few large ones were in the big pool.

Notes: Electrofished via a boat and when we motored down into the largest pool, tons of fish floated up. We did our best to get every single one of them, but at least 20% of the fish in the pool floated way downstream and out of sight.

Edited by NateTessler13, 23 February 2008 - 10:38 AM.

wowie imagine what you can find when your not shocking the crap out of everything.
my prediction is 20 pages.

Hi daniel, welcome to the Forum.

Electrofishing is pretty much the only way to get any sort of semi-quantitative data for many rivers, short of rotenone, primacord or gill nets. Since you're clearly well-versed in sampling techniques, I'm sure you understand the relative lethality of these techniques. Electrofishing mortality has recently become a hot topic, and many state agencies have enacted knee-jerk reactions to reduce hypothesized effects... E-fishing mortality is highly secies specific (a function of the cross-sectional area of the body, as well as the number and robustness of vertebral elements). It can also be reduced by modifying the waveform and reducing the frequency of pulses. There's been several recent studes that have documented very low mortality among many groups of fishes (as well as mussels and other inverts), and having spent several 1000s of hours e-fishing, I'm convinced that by far the greatest source of mortality in most sampling is due to holding fish while you're finishing a site/transect/depletion pass -- this holds true whether you're e-fishing or seining, and is just a fact of life.

If you want to criticize scientists and resource managers for e-fishing, take a hard look at the survival rate of fishes in your aquarium (ask Irate about his Tank-O-Death!), or if you don't keep fish, the how the effects of your own daily actions (generating NOx on your drive to work that contributes to acid precipitation; eating Central Valley fruit that require massive amounts of water for irrigation; throwing out plastics that wind up in streams; runoff from your house contributing to flashier streamflows, etc. etc.) induce habitat degradation of streams and rivers...

Best regards,
Dave

Yeah. I've even given up on arguing with Yoder about this. Sure, seining can be a less lethal technique that provides a better look at the community. However, you don't have a bunch of NANFA wackos manning those seines (so what is the standardization of effort?). Some of the OEPA data from the Maumee is so horribly done with e-fishing, I'd hate to see what those guys came up with if they actually had to work (when end up getting the C-list of samplers from any cohort because no one wants to come play in our muddy water). How would those guys catch compare to, say, those of us who're willing to do bodily harm to get their fish?

And the amount of care given to those fish in any situation... You could cut the foam on most of those holding tanks with a knife. As Dave is saying, there's the problem.

So the most standardized sample in most large water bodies is to e-fish followed with a trawl to account for the more benthic fishes.

However, as an ecologist interested in community modelling... I wouldn't touch their data with a 20 foot rod. I still don't trust it to be standard enough across watersheds. I'd have to know the samplers to even bother with it. And I can definately say I'd use Brian and Nate's data, without a thought.

Todd "Dude! My legs and gut are cramping in half, pull in! Pull in!" Crail

I'd like to add that I've seined and dipped most of the waters e-fished above. Some of the above waters we've had as many as 6 hardcore guys with seines. Needless to say even with six guys and 20' seines we might catch a single adult moxostoma per 5 days sampling and very few adult sunfish. Seines don't do well in the log jams either. I sure have fun when seining these waters but I know full well I'm missing many species and not getting any real good idea of adult populations. Look at all of the sucker in the species lists above. I can only dream of getting this sample with seines.

I'd like to add that part of the reason for doing this sampling was to see which method is most appropriate for which kind of sites. We were classifying sites based on appearance, and then later, when looking at our data, we could see how efficient we actually were at those sites with the methods we used. True, all of our sites were electro-fished, but we electro-fished different sites using different electro-fishing methods. Hopefully the work that we've done will better answer biologists questions about which sampling methods would be most effective in which rivers. It's all about efficiency.
As far as mortality went, the only time we saw mortality was when our livewell began to get too full and then the small cyprinids that get lost in the bunch started doing the death dance. Most times they were easy to revive, every now and then you would lose some Bluntnose Minnows. The only large fish that had a problem with mortality were the Common Carp. That's simply because they would not make it into the livewell. This wasn't due to obvious reasons, but rather due to the fact that they were very large, very abundant, took up too much space in the livewell, and their excessive thrashing caused for much stress on other non-introduced fish.

well keep adding because youve got 16 more pages to go or im out 5 bucks.

well keep adding because youve got 16 more pages to go or im out 5 bucks.

It's easy to troll internet forums. Do you have anything to add?

I'm kind of surprised some of those sites so far described did not yield Shortnosed gar..

I'm kind of surprised some of those sites so far described did not yield Shortnosed gar..

Yeah, we were expecting to see them a few times. We did find them at Sugar Creek (tributary to Salt Creek, which is a major tributary to the Sangamon River (which enters the Illinois River)). I haven't put that site together yet, so I'll post it when I get around to it. They were really abundant where there was suitable habitat in this stream. When I was canoeing around I could see groups of 8-10 adult sized fish swimming around near the sand flats adjacent to deeper pools.

Edited by NateTessler13, 24 February 2008 - 02:24 PM.

Date: September 27, 2007
Location: Rock River in Rockford, IL. Just downstream of the dam in downtown Rockford.
Water Level: Slightly higher than usual levels for this time of year. A pool near a bridge that was located in the middle of our site was 7.6m deep. Otherwise, there was a shallow gravel bar at the beginning of our site that looked like it was a washed down from the dam. After the large gravel bar, the site was a large, swift, and deep run. Being on the boat during this site gave me the feel of being on a raft going through rapids.

Water Quality: D.O. 10.9mg/L. Lots of siltation. This river is very wide (250m+) and runs through a very urbanized area.
Water Temp.: 19.13*C
Substrate: A few gravel bars, otherwise a highly modified cement shoreline with large boulders and concrete slabs making up the substrate. Some sand was present near the shoreline in the few slack water areas.
Collected:
Gizzard Shad (Dorosoma cepedianum) – lots of adult sized fish.
Muskellunge (Esox masquinongy)

– this fish was a big surprise. Right when we turned on the generator, directly downstream of the gravel bar that is in the forefront of the picture of the site (above), this fish rolled to the surface. It stretched 39” long and weighed 7,700 g. This was the only one we found in our sample. It was probably waiting for fish to wash over the top of the gravel bar.
Common Carp (Cyprinus carpio) – lots of large ones as well.
Western Gravel Chub (Erimystax x-punctatus x-punctatus)

– found one on a mid-river gravel bar. Brian said that he saw more, but the flow was too strong to catch them with the net. These fish are pretty common in the Rock River, although I believe they are a state threatened fish. This picture does a great job of showing the x-markings on the sides of the fish where its name is derived from. These fish are probably more common than thought, but their habitat seems difficult to sample.
Bluntnose Minnow (Pimephales notatus) – very abundant.
Bullhead Minnow (Pimephales vigilax) – a few adult sized fish.
Fathead Minnow (Pimephales promelas) – one.
Spotfin Shiner (Cyprinella spiloptera) – also very abundant.
Emerald Shiner (Notropis atherinoides) – makes up the 3rd component of the 3 most common fish found in large rivers in central and northern Illinois. When you get more towards the western and southern parts of Illinois the Red Shiner replaces the Spotfin Shiner at most sites.
Sand Shiner (Notropis stramineus stramineus) – a few were near the shoreline areas that were somewhat sand bottomed.
Bigmouth Buffalo (Ictiobus cyprinellus) – lots of large ones were caught here. They were very abundant in this stretch of the river. I was told that on the Rock River there is a large commercial fishery for Buffalo fish.
Smallmouth Buffalo (Ictiobus bubalus)

– only one large one. This was the largest Smallmouth Buffalo I’d ever seen. Look at the exaggeration of the hump on the region right after its head. That is an identifying characteristic of these fish.
Central Quillback (Carpiodes cyprinus hinei) – a few large adults.
Northern Quillback (Carpiodes cyprinus cyprinus)

- this picture shows the average size of the Quillback that we were finding at this site.
Highfin Carpsucker (Carpiodes velifer) – found a few adult sized fish here as well.
River Carpsucker (Carpiodes carpio)


– lots of large adults here. We found every species of the genus Carpiodes that you could possibly find here.
Silver Redhorse (Moxostoma anisurum) – found a few very large ones. We saw a lot more than we were able to net. With the current, the fish would pop up and then get swept away.
Shorthead Redhorse (Moxostoma macrolepidotum) – lots of large ones were captured here. This could have been a function of being able to see their bright red tails better than most other species of fish in this turbid water.
Northern Hogsucker (Hypentelium nigricans)

– only this large one. This was quite a large river and I didn’t expect to see Hogsuckers in close quarters with some of the other large river species that we found. This fish definitely has a golden hue to it and has whorled scales, so it wasn’t the healthiest looking Hogsucker we’d seen.
Channel Catfish (Ictalurus punctatus) – these were everywhere throughout this site. Most size classes were well represented. Not many over 5lbs. though.
White Bass (Morone chrysops) - found a few small ones in the first pool below the gravel bar.
Yellow Bass (Morone mississippiensis)

– one small one. Note the broken lateral bands on the lower half of the body.
Northern Smallmouth Bass (Micropterus dolomieu dolomieu) - only a few. There really wasn’t a lot of suitable habitat for these fish here.
Black Crappie (Pomoxis nigromaculatus)
White Crappie (Pomoxis annularis)

– one.
Bluegill Sunfish (Lepomis macrochirus macrochirus)
Green Sunfish (Lepomis cyanellus)
Orangespotted Sunfish (Lepomis humilis) – none of the centrarchids were present in high numbers here.
Hybrid Sunfish (Lepomis hybrid)
Walleye (Sander vitreus vitreus) - a few nice sized ones (in the 14-18" range) were around the deeper parts of the swift run.
Freshwater Drum (Aplodinotus grunniens) – lots of large ones. These fish probably constituted the greatest biomass of all the fish we found here.

Notes: Electrofished from the boat and used two netters. Lots of these fish would have been missed by only using one netter. A spot like this is difficult to do with only a 16’ boat as we had.

Nice shots on the Rock River. Indeed, Erimystax x-punctatus is common in the Rock. We would get them seining gravel shoals and riffles.

I did a fair amount of poking around the lower Rock River, as it was a historical locality for the Gilt Darter, Percina evides.

Oh yeah? We were concious of that historic locality for the Gilt Darter. We jokingly would hope for one at each lower Rock River site. What were you studying that you found yourself about the lower Rock?

Working on Gilt Darters. See attached PDF.

Thanks for sharing, I printed out a copy and will read through it more thoroughly. Since I've started learning about darters I've been interested in the Gilt Darters distribution and curious about how/why their populations are so disjunct.

Date: September 28, 2007
Location: Kishwaukee River near New Milford, IL. In the Kishwaukee River Forest Preserve. At Blackhawk Rd. and Milford Rd.
Water Level: Slightly higher than usual levels for this time of year. The max depth was 1.5m. There were a few gravel bars and cobble run areas that were shallow between the pools.
Water Quality: Slightly stained. Some siltation on the bottom of the pools. Areas that really any flow (the gravel bars and the cobble runs) were free of silt however.
Water Temp.: 17.4*C
Substrate: Sand and gravel mostly. The runs had nice sized cobble and gravel. There were some fallen trees that provided excellent cover. Bends in the river that had scoured out pools had fallen trees in them as well. These were areas where the fish concentrated.
Collected:
American Brook Lamprey (Lampetra appendix)

– only found one here. They really don’t sit still too well for a dry photo and we didn’t have any photo tanks to take pictures of this fish in. Brian was doing the netting here and I believe he found this one on the downstream side of a large riffle that emptied into the biggest pool in that 500m stretch of the river.
Grass Pickerel (Esox americanus vermiculatus)

- found a few near some slack water, near some fallen trees.
Common Carp (Cyprinus carpio) – a few large ones.
Western Gravel Chub (Erimystax x-punctatus x-punctatus)

- a few were found here. There was lots of suitable habitat here. We found only 5 in a 500m stretch though. They are at their peak abundance in Illinois when they are in the Rock River and its tributaries.
Suckermouth Minnow (Phenocobius mirabilis) – a few were here in the swifter moving areas.
Central Striped Shiner (Luxilus chrysocephalus chrysocephalus) – not as common as some of the other cyprinids here. There was good diversity between cyprinids here.
Bluntnose Minnow (Pimephales notatus) – very abundant (100+)
Spotfin Shiner (Cyprinella spiloptera) – also very abundant (100+)
Emerald Shiner (Notropis atherinoides)
Carmine Shiner (Notropis percobromus)
Sand Shiner (Notropis stramineus stramineus) – very abundant here as well. This was probably a function of the clean sand and gravel habitat.
Central Stoneroller (Campostoma anomalum pullum)
Bigmouth Buffalo (Ictiobus cyprinellus) – a few large ones were in the deepest hole, alongside most of the large Catostomids
Highfin Carpsucker (Carpiodes velifer) – a few large adult fish were in that hole.
River Carpsucker (Carpiodes carpio)

- these fish were very abundant here. We found mostly adult sized fish.
Northern Quillback (Carpiodes cyprinus cyprinus) – also very abundant in the deeper areas of this site. Most fish were large adults.
Central Quillback (Carpiodes cyprinus hinei) – found all the Carpiodes species here in good numbers. All were large and very healthy looking. This speaks well of the stream as we also found 4 Moxostoma species in good numbers here.
Black Redhorse (Moxostoma duquesnei)

– lots of adult sized fish in this area. It really looked to be more of ideal Black Redhorse habitat than Golden Redhorse, but we found both in equal numbers and size. It was really easy to tease the Golden Redhorse apart from the Black Redhorse at this site because we had big numbers of adult fish. The Black Redhorse definitely has a more slender appearance.
Golden Redhorse (Moxostoma erythrurum)

– as with the other Catostomids, very abundant and large. The fish pictured here was a male that had signs of previous tuberculation.
Silver Redhorse (Moxostoma anisurum)
Shorthead Redhorse (Moxostoma macrolepidotum)
White Sucker (Catostomus commersonii commersonii)

- only found one of these. It was surprising to see them mixed in with these large river species.
Northern Hogsucker (Hypentelium nigricans) – lots of large ones of these as well.
Channel Catfish (Ictalurus punctatus) – lots of large ones were in all the deeper pools. This area was loaded with large, healthy fish.
Stonecat Madtom (Noturus flavus) – a few were in the riffles, they weren’t very abundant here though.
Northern Largemouth Bass (Micropterus salmoides salmoides)

- only a few short fat ones like this one were found here. This spot was ideal Smallmouth Bass habitat.
Northern Smallmouth Bass (Micropterus dolomieu dolomieu) – lots of large ones in this sample.
Black Crappie (Pomoxis nigromaculatus)
Rock Bass (Ambloplites rupestris)
Warmouth (Lepomis gulosus) – found one of these in the deeper pool with the Catostomids.
Pumpkinseed Sunfish (Lepomis gibbosus) – just one.
Bluegill Sunfish (Lepomis macrochirus macrochirus)
Green Sunfish (Lepomis cyanellus)
Walleye (Sander vitreus vitreus)

– found a few in the sand bottomed pools.
Slenderhead Darter (Percina phoxocephala) – a few in the riffles.
Blackside Darter (Percina maculata)

– in and around the fallen trees by the shoreline. Usually found in water shallower than 1m.
Rainbow Darter (Etheostoma caeruleum) – very abundant in the riffles and in the cobble run areas.
Banded Darter (Etheostoma zonale) – just as abundant as the Rainbow Darters, and found in the same areas.
Freshwater Drum (Aplodinotus grunniens) – only a few in the deeper pools here.

Notes: Being in the forest preserve, this watershed seemed very intact. Very distinguishable riffle, run, pool habitat. While I was waiting for Bob and Brian to get done with one of the deeper pools I fished from the canoe. I caught Smallmouth Bass and Walleye from the canoe, and even snagged a Shorthead Redhorse. I’d like to spend some time in this area in the future fishing.