Re: NANFA-L-- Keeping Sculpin

Jeff Grabarkiewicz (threehorn_wartyback at yahoo.com)
Thu, 15 Sep 2005 10:37:22 -0700 (PDT)

Todd- By the way, I think we caught the tail end of the Fish Creek phenomenon...all those Feds are gone. I had my bucket down there last weekend and didn't find a single live fed or state endangered species. Watters recovery plan for the clubshell and riffleshell mentions that both were not found alive in a thorough survey of Fish Creek in 1993 (20 river mile stretch I
think). Although, we did fine that one live clubshell this year, we haven't turned up any others all summer.

The EFWB of the St Joes however has a clubshell population in a 10 mile long area in Hillsdale County, Michigan. Doesn't say anything about its viability though.

To look at those recovery plans and see the historical and current ranges is shocking. How quickly they disappeared. Totally sucks that we are probably going to lose all 3 species in the next few decades.....And the white catspaw is already gone. I wouldn't be surprised to see cylindrica and fabalis knock off soon too.

Jeff

"Todd D. Crail" <tcrail at UTNet.UToledo.Edu> wrote:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jeff Grabarkiewicz"
>
> Todd seined the upper part of this creek, he may have seen more sculpin up
there. I imagine they might also become denser the further you move up.
>

Where'd you go? Road 3? Finally some fish data from there lol. Are you
sure they were blackside? EPA data had a lot of dusky darter up there.
I've been waiting to see some Maumee genotype duskies :)

The population of sculpin was thin upstream in Indiana as well. Far lower
numbers than I would have expected. Creek chub, bluntnose, green sunfish
and johnny darter dominated the fish community, which are all compromise
tolerant... I did catch about 15 mottled sculpin and a single male hornyhead
chub that was sweet. Didn't get any catfish, although John said he saw some
in the riffles under his view bucket (which I think you should tell these
nice NANFA people about fish watching with ;).

The East Fork of the West Branch of the St. Joseph River (what a mouthful
huh?) however... was packed with sculpin and the rest of the higher water
quality crew. Not like Macochee Creek (Mad River) "packed with sculpin",
but pretty darned solid populations. I'm sure it's directly proportionate
to the avg temps of those two streams.

I hope you took time to head north and see this stream if you drove out
there again. Then we can begin to compare notes and start to guess why the
one that looks trashed has the 3 Fed listed animals and the one that looks
sweet, doesn't.

Todd
The Muddy Maumee Madness, Toledo, OH
It's never too late to have a happy childhood.
http://www.farmertodd.com
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