ill be going down to my grandfathers house near sunset beach NC for 7-9 days and wondering if anyones ever sampled in that area? me and my brother were thinking of trying in the swamp lands around there, its supposed to have banded sunfish and pygmy sunfish around.

id love to have some of those for my native tank, but i wont collect them and transport them 400 miles with no real good way of transportation, id just like to sample the area, im also going to have to get a 7 day fishing license pass.

matthew

Hopefully a local or two will chime in, but I can offer a visiter's point of view...
Lake Waccamaw is very close to there. It is unique in that it has a couple of endemics, a silverside and a killifish, I think, going from memory.
I have never been there, but I visited a few other "Bay" ponds in the area. They are typically shallow, extremely dark with tannin, low pH and low fish densities [speaking from personal observation]. Lake Waccamaw is bigger and pH higher than the others so my observation may be useless.
I doubt it's legal to take endemics but it would be cool to at least see 'em. The lakes I visited were too dark [Coca Cola] for snorkeling and the barren sandy bottoms made dipnetting unproductive, a good sized seine might turn something up. Check the laws first, I dunno.

We found the coolest fish in the area in roadside ditches that had decent amount of clean looking water. Some had hard packed sand bottoms and could be waded. A desire to study native herptefauna at close range is required for such activities, however, and dip netting from shore was productive too. We did not seine.
We found blue spotted sunfish abundant as well as lined top minnows. We also came up with a few swamp darters, plenty gambusia and even a swampfish on a lucky blind grab.
A half dozen bluespots, a trio of topminnows and a lone swamp darter made the 700+ mile trip home in a cooler in the back seat with no problem, as did several serpents.

The Cape Fear River is also predominent all through out the region. A diversity of habitat is available on the river in reasonable drive distances and boat ramps are numerous. It's a good sized river and I didn't try sampling it when I was there. We did see several boats anchored below a dam pulling in some nice catfish.

BTW, if you do have a desire to study native herptefauna, drive out to the State Forest land in Bladen county or the agricultural land in Pender county and drive the back roads from dinner time on, as long as you can stay awake if it's warm. Impending thunderstorms are particularly appreciated.
Watch the road closely for reptiles. If the storms catch up to you, watch for amphibians as well. There is a large diversity of cool herps to see. Just remember that several are venomous, so bring your field guide.

I got a chance to go collecting in the area last summer with Fritz. He would be the local expert and if you get in touch with him he could certainly tell you more. However, we went to a few spots that day and caught some really cool fish. Lined topminnows, banded sunfish, everglades pygmy sunfish, pickerel, chubsuckers, coastal shiners, and a number of other goodies were readily collected. We did not collect in the lake at all, but surrounding area is awesome.

I got a chance to go collecting in the area last summer with Fritz. He would be the local expert and if you get in touch with him he could certainly tell you more. However, we went to a few spots that day and caught some really cool fish. Lined topminnows, banded sunfish, everglades pygmy sunfish, pickerel, chubsuckers, coastal shiners, and a number of other goodies were readily collected. We did not collect in the lake at all, but surrounding area is awesome.

I've contacted him off line. Some of the spots you and visited dried up last year.

Fritz

im down at calabash nc now found plenty of gambusia in a golf course pond ill try to take photos of my catches

matthew

just got back from vacation last night, only fished on the waccamaw for about 20-30 minutes due to the wife raising hell about me fishing on the trip back home AFTER she agree'd to let me and my brother fish on the trip back as long as we went down to barefoot landing with her at the beach.... her trip = 4 hours, our trip = 30 minutes.... not a good compromise.


either way i caught about 40-60 mosquito fish that lived the trip back, im hoping they breed for me, ive been told that 40-60 of them can quickly become 500+ in a matter of months, then ill have my own feeders.

i also brought back a smal sunfish from a golf course pond by my grandpa's house, it was a black water type pond, about 1/16th acre, maybe 40 feet-50 feet around if its lucky, i think its a warmouth, if its not a warmouth its a strange looking fish, its about 2" long and could fit a penny in its HUGE mouth!

on the waccamaw river i caught two sunfish that i kept at 2" long, they appear to be longear sunfish or central dollar sunfish, im not 100% sure but they have nice coloring and some good blue hue's on their spinal fins.


ill try to get some photo's later.


by the way the mosquito fish look exactly like large guppies, they are in a 90 gallon tank so hopefully they have enough room.

matthew

just got back from vacation last night, only fished on the waccamaw for about 20-30 minutes due to the wife raising hell about me fishing on the trip back home AFTER she agree'd to let me and my brother fish on the trip back as long as we went down to barefoot landing with her at the beach.... her trip = 4 hours, our trip = 30 minutes.... not a good compromise.
either way i caught about 40-60 mosquito fish that lived the trip back, im hoping they breed for me, ive been told that 40-60 of them can quickly become 500+ in a matter of months, then ill have my own feeders.

i also brought back a smal sunfish from a golf course pond by my grandpa's house, it was a black water type pond, about 1/16th acre, maybe 40 feet-50 feet around if its lucky, i think its a warmouth, if its not a warmouth its a strange looking fish, its about 2" long and could fit a penny in its HUGE mouth!

on the waccamaw river i caught two sunfish that i kept at 2" long, they appear to be longear sunfish or central dollar sunfish, im not 100% sure but they have nice coloring and some good blue hue's on their spinal fins.
ill try to get some photo's later.
by the way the mosquito fish look exactly like large guppies, they are in a 90 gallon tank so hopefully they have enough room.

matthew

We don't have longears here and dollars usually occur in shallow heavily vegetated water. Most likely you got small redbreast sunfish , especially since you mention the blue hue but i can tell better after seeing photos.

Fritz

Edited by fritz, 22 June 2008 - 04:35 PM.

We don't have longears here and dollars usually occur in shallow heavily vegetated water. Most likely you got small redbreast sunfish , especially since you mention the blue hue but i can tell better after seeing photos.

Fritz

photo's are coming first, is what i think might be a longear or dollar sunfish, although it does have little orange spots like a orange spot sunfish,
these first two photo's are of the fish inside the tank, with no flash



this is of inside the tank WITH flash


this is of one of my longears(i guess) and the fish in the back is from the waccamaw


the next photo's are of the second fish i got in waccamaw, outside of the water, in my hand, he isnt doing well, the other fish beat him badly he's alone in a 20 gallon tank now with a bite out of his tail (the meaty part of his tail)





next is a green sunfish i caught in cedar lakes WV, just putting it in cause it was a cool looking fish and my first photo of him, i took him out of the tank to take an anchor worm off his tail.



and last, is a fish i caught in the new river up in hawks nest WV, he isnt the most colorful one i have either, elk river has much prettier ones.




hopefully with the photo's of the fish i caught on waccamaw you can ID them, the fish i caught in the golf course pond was too quick for me to catch, im 90% sure its a warmouth though, but he was in a golf course pond in calabash NC.

matthew

figured id edit to say that ALL fish photo'd were caught on hook and line except for the green sunfish, it was netted in a pond in cedar lakes WV (ripley WV technically)

matthew

Edited by macantley, 24 June 2008 - 07:53 PM.

You got dollar sunfish here in NC. Both of the photos. Beautiful fish.

Fritz

Edited by fritz, 24 June 2008 - 08:31 PM.

i caught them about 100-150 yards up stream of the boat ramp on NC 904, i think that area of the river is called lake waccamaw on my GPS, not to be confused with waccamaw lake or whichever way they go, its not the large circular lake in NC at whiteville

it was a great place to fish, great riverside access, fish were easy to catch and would easily take bait worms i got at walmart, if i had a small canoe, or even a small jonboat i think plenty of fish could have been had, including pygmy sunfish (not that i wanted any) and redfin pickerel as well as blue spotted sunfish.

matthew

I am visiting my Mom in early January in Myrtle beach. I was wondering if sampling/collecting would be productive this time of year in the waccamaw or surrounding area? Should I wait till warmer weather? The cold will not be an issue on my part.

I am visiting my Mom in early January in Myrtle beach. I was wondering if sampling/collecting would be productive this time of year in the waccamaw or surrounding area? Should I wait till warmer weather? The cold will not be an issue on my part.

you should have no trouble sampling in the creeks and ditches then. Not sure about the river but I've been able to have productive sampling year round.