Well, where to start..
Isn't it funny how much fish ( and ALGAE ) grow when you're not looking?
All my tiny little fry are looking like small adults now. The algae..OY!
What a mess to come home to.
I've been all over the continent, and while I haven't been able to do
any collecting, I sure have found a lot of nice places for it. Oh, how I
envy you people with clear streams instead of the the chocolate rivers
we have down here in Alabama. I swear I could see clear to the bottom in
quite a few places, and in those places I could see fish aplenty.
I think I saw a big school of Bluehead Shiners in one stream in
Arkansas, right off the side of the road. It looked like about fifty or
so little bits of blue tinfoil drifting in the water. I definately saw
so many Cardinal Shiners in one little stream that the water looked
almost red when the sunlight caught them just right. WOW!
Alas, I didn't have a net, a license, the time, or any way to take any
with me.
Illinois...water, water everywhere. Darters galore, too, and plainly
visible from the bank.
North Carolina..my old childhood stomping grounds. I took a detour
through my old hometown of Dunn, and before long I wound up at the place
where I used to catch Cape Fear Shiners aplenty. ( Hey, what does a
ten-year old know about endangered species? ) I'm happy to report that
they're still there, hanging tough!
Texas--
Well, Texas was a disappointment. The Sabine was muddy, the Rio Grande
was so polluted it looked like little could live in it, and while the
Llano was certainly a very pretty river to behold, I couldn't see a
single fish. The Llano, for those who haven't seen it, is a very
peculiar color. It looks like one of those dried peas you'd find in a
just-add-water cup of ramen noodle soup, being a pretty green with a
whitish cast. Weird.
I have to say it's very annoying to be a native fish fan and be unable
to collect when given such a grand opportunity to travel.
In other news, did any of you catch that article in TFH regarding the
mysterious new giant fish in China?
There's this remote lake in some obscure corner of China which has some
as yet undescribed fish in it. They were discovered only recently,
either 1986 or 96 or something..I don't have the article here with me.
Anyway, these fish are a vivid red color, roughly salmonid in shape, and
they have an estimated maximum length approaching 30 feet!!!!
I saw some fish on aquabid once which were asian, a bright red color,
very large, and horrifically expensive. The auction warned that they
were rare and apt to grow to tremendous size. I wonder if that was them?
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