I went to see if there was any change, and there wasn't, really. THe bluenose were not there at any rate. So I went to site two, which is on the same creek but a couple of miles away. The place where I had always found them in the past was gone - overgrown with brush, it had apparently been gone for at least a couple of years. Site three (actually I stopped there first, as it is quite a distance from the other sites) has never been a reliable producer. So, I was neither suprised nor disappointed to find no bluenose there either.
So on the way home I decided to stop by "trash creek" to pick up some flagfins. I don't normally go there because I can get all the flagfins I want a lot closer to home. I call it trash creek because I have encountered hog carcasses along with assorted garbage bags, mattresses, TV,s and what not pitched into the creek (next to the "no dumping" sign, of course!). Here is a photo of the trash creek, minus MOST of the trash.
That black looking thing at the bottom of the photo (kind of on the left side) is a box spring from some kind of mattress or sofa. I was standing on it while collecting fishes. I spotted a likely looking school of flagfins, and ...something else. My first net rewarded me with flagfins and several bluenose! I had never heard of bluenose being at that site, but BG confirmed that he has seen them there on a couple of occasions. I was disappointed that they were not yet in their spawning colors (no longear nests were observed), but I was glad to see that they had not disappeared completely from any accessible site.
The plants in the lower right are golden club, and from the dinner-plate sized plants I first encountered several years ago, these things have turned into mosters - 5 feet across! (if I'm a man). I broke off a couple of the spikes which appeared to have mature fruit on them (I hope so) so that I could try to grow them in my pond.
Edited by Irate Mormon, 03 May 2008 - 06:04 PM.