The Salt Creek Watershed Network organized another Meet The Creek event this year. This time in collaboration with the Elk Grove Village Park District and "Pesticide Environmental Stewardship Program" and it was held in Elk Grove Village, IL. NANFA was invited to setup a native fish display.
NANFA members present were Scott Davis, Bill Yard and Sajjad Lateef. Also helping out was George Fryk, a Chicago area aquarist, who couldn't resist the urge to go splash in the creek. :) It was a very pleasant day, slightly overcast and very good day for collecting.
In a couple of hours of seining the heavily "managed" Elk Grove Village section of Salt Creek, we managed to collect several species. Also seen, but, not caught was a huge carp that left a wake as it swam away from us. The main section of the creek was channelized (shallow and straight stream bed, with almost no structure to speak of) and the edges stablized with concrete structures meshed together. The houses lining the creek had neatly trimmed lawn edging all the way up to the creek edge. All in all, the creek was the epitome of a "neat" managed creek. But, to the credit of the homeowners, some were making efforts to provide shelter for the fish by submerging woodbranches lashed together. We collected most of the fish from the vicinity of these structures and from places where branches had fallen in and created a "reef" of sorts. We also got a lot of young fish from the side creeks which were still relatively untouched.
We got a chance to chat with several people about native fish. A lot of young children stopped by to see us seine fish up, including one little boy who wanted to know if we caught tadpoles at every haul of the seine.
The following fish species were collected and setup in a display:
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