Logperch observation

While fishing the mouth of a creek that feeds into the lower susquehanna I had the opportunity to observe some intresting nature. The water is really clear and I can easily see all kinds of fish from carp and bass down to darters and shiners. While walking the bank looking for fish, I spotted pod of roughly 20 to 30 1.5" to 2" fish in a tight group very close to shore. I was able to get close enough to get a really good look and confirmed they were (Cheaspeake) logperch. I thought this was pretty wild. I didn't think they would school like that in slack water over a sand bottom.

Further upstream I was watching a school of minnows while kneeling in the water and I could see logperch and tessellated darters mixed in and feeding just the same. Most reports I hear of logperch tout them as being somewhat incidental and tough to find. I have found them to be quite common in creek mouths especially in the first few riffles as you head up the creek. I would be interested to find out how prevalent they are in the main river. All in all a good morning of fishing and a nice time enjoying wild America. I need to snorkel!

Yup that is pretty normal behavior for logperches. Especially in the areas you are looking, they are found in habitat that is under sampled, hard to sample, or they can be just plain old elusive. They aren't found too far up the tributaries of the main rivers. We have caught a few of them using benthic trawls in the main river and I know some people with PA doing the same this year. I've also seen them snorkeling in the river. I'm not sure where they would be touted as being incidental. Their (known) range is just very very small and they went unreported for a long period of time in some places where they still reside. Nice to hear the clarity in that area is good, really haven't had rain, I hope today didn't ruin it because I'll be snorkeling that way soon.

Thank you for posting your observations. This is a logperch species, but not the Logperch, Percina caprodes. The species you are observing is Percina bimaculata, the Chesapeake Logperch. Are you in PA or MD? If you send me a personal message of the locality, I can see if this is a site where historical collections of this species are recorded.

Also, you can find a copy of a paper that discusses the distribution of this species on my website http://www.yale.edu/eeb/near/pubs.htm It is listed as pub number 38.

Tom Near

Already beat ya to the punch Tom. Bart and I talked this morning and it is a location where we've probably documented the most since 1994. Actually headed that way in a week or two since we have a site just a few river miles upstream that we can't sample using our standard methods. Just got a couple new wet suits in and I'll finally be putting some much needed effort into that and the nearby streams. I believe we're in review now too...

I've edited the topic title to be a little more informative and added the paranthesis to initial post.