On Friday we made a NANFA mini-trip to Limestone Creek in Limestone County, north Alabama. Doug Dame was passing through as part of a several day solo trip and met myself and Andrew (Acropora) at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. The site we went to on Limestone Creek is easy access, clean water with pool, riffle and run habitats, and is a surefire bet for scarlet shiners and black darters, which Doug was interested in. If you work it the right way there are also blackspotted topminnows, madtoms, and sunfish including orangespots but it takes ambitious seining for the latter in my experience.

We had a beautiful day, about 70 deg. F and a clear sky. Andrew and Doug quickly caught lots of black darters along the riffles, and Andrew netted lots of scarlet shiner YOY for a research project we're working on. Below is a long distance shot of Doug at the bottom of a fast run:

Here's Andrew examining my superfine mesh net for YOY scarlets:

And here are Andrew and Doug in a high-contrast light shot:

Doug hit the road after this on the way to Alexander City, AL, in the Tallapoosa River drainage. He was headed for Hillabee Creek east of Alexander City, a beautiful high-diversity creek that everyone interested in fish should visit at least once (yeah, it's the site of the ritual dog executions, just don't look under the bridge).

I had absolutely no idea you took these pictures.. Typically I notice.. but there was some serious stealth involved with these.

It was a fun and quick trip. It's always nice to get out around this time of the year.
I checked on the darters in our tank today--They're looking good.

Edited by AndrewAcropora, 20 October 2008 - 12:19 AM.

Nice! I'd only been to the lowermost part of Limestone; I'll have to check out the upper reaches next time I'm in Huntsville.

And I very much appreciate you and Andrew spending part of your Friday afternoon to show a wanderer to a wonderful site with neat fish.

And of course a big Thank You for seining up the scarlets, by myself I am sure I would have caught exactly el-zippo, my normal dipnet quota for (non-Pternotropis) shiners.

Hillabee Creek was also excellent, it's very picturesque. Got some nice bronze darters (Percina palmaris), which was the main thing I was hoping for from there. Plus I avoided making hard contact between my head or elbows and any of the rock ledges, which I also consider a success.

While I starting to bag up some keepers, parked under the bridge, a muddy, jacked-up 4-wheel drive truck came down the access road. I gave the guy a friendly nod and wave. He proceeded to drive his truck into the river (which is mostly 2" to 8" deep), turned upriver and out of my sight due to the vegetation, and did 10 minutes of loud manoevers in the river (?spinouts/rock-climbing/wheelies?) before emerging much cleaner. I wanted to give him another, different gesture as he drove by me to get out, but I hadn't noticed on his arrival whether he had a gun rack or not, so I just did the beady eye thing into the back of his head. Grrrr. Grrr. Grrrr.

A fun trip. Everyone should go out and see fish in the wild as often as possible. (While we still have habitat to support them?) Especially if you get outside your normal home range, you find fish that are new to you and interesting to see, even if you put them all back.

3 1/2 days, 1758 miles, kept one or more fish from 12 spots and visited a few others, had to bypass a bunch of places I would have loved to have had time to check out. Probably too ambitious, but what the heck, I have Advil, and a DVR so I can always watch TV later.

I desperately need one of those waterproof, shock-proof, carry with you in your pocket all the time cameras. (But I already spent my tax-rebate on new biggish tank for darters, grrrr again. Oh Santa, are you listening?)

Edited by Doug_Dame, 21 October 2008 - 01:32 PM.

Doug, reading your account of Hillabee Creek I was afraid that you were gonna say the guy shot a dog in front of you under the bridge. Now THAT would be bold. But given what happened, I'm not surprised, it's the godgiven right of every American to drive up streambeds anywhere, anytime. Feh.