NANFA-- nanfa 2000

Klaus Schoening (sege7_at_earthlink.net)
Wed, 23 Aug 2000 22:33:24 -0700

I am happy to report Pat Johnson and I made it safely home without wrasslin
any more poisonous snakes :) though we did catch a gar in the Barren River
system of KY Monday midmorning.

I would like to extend a warm thank you to Martin and BG for the wonderful
hospitality they showed us. The weekend was great and I have to say a great
deal of fun though I got almost no sleep. Pat and I rented a car in
Cincinnati and finally got under way ...well let me paste in what I tried to
send to the list last night at 3:30 am when I finally stopped putting fish
out:

Its 3:30 on wednesday morning.... I have almost all the fish put away except
for the golden chub suckers, the six channel catfish someone put in with the
lutrensis, a pirate perch, a half dozen percina and a herd of notti too many
to try and count in my bait keeper.

I lost count of the lutrensis at around 30, I know I only caught about 15 (I
wanted a nice school of them but some one added all of their catch in with
my fish and then only took 3 with him LOL. I must have over 30 signipinnis
as once again I have the excess catch that my travel partner and fellow
collector decided he didn't want when he selected his fish. I am
estimating that I have from 10-12 welaka, they are in three tanks and each
tank has at least three welaka. I have four roseipinnis, when I wasnt
looking my collecting partner kept throwing those back as he didnt think I
would want any hehe... but heh I do have four. A few other minnows are in
there... that I have yet to id... I have two female Heterandria formosa, a
trade for some signipinnis that were pickled. I also have four very small
Elassoma zonatum.

After collecting in Ard Creek, Pat and I went down the road and collected in
Foster Creek I think. The water was a good 5-10 degrees warmer so we didn't
catch any more welaka, but we did get signipinnis. Pat also caught a water
mocassin... I have to say those fangs and flat head look pretty impressive.
I found some golden club growing by this stream.

Pat and I returned to Ard Creek and caught a few more fish and about a 7
inch longear in beautiful breeding color. The owner came back down to talk
to us ... he was genuinely thrilled to have met us, I took a picture of him
and got his name and address.

Then Pat and I went to Hurricane Creek just across the MS border and looked
for darters. We got shoes full of sand, sand shiners, pirate perch and
three gulf darters. One male and two females. Pat also found another
water mocassin which he proceeded to antagonize (does Pat have a death wish
... I dunno) The snake retaliated by striking at his seine pole LOL...