After unloading their gear and live-food cultures that they'd brought, we
settled down for a home cooked meal graciously prepared by my beautiful wife
Bessie.
We dined on freshly-caught Speckled trout and a great potato salad and side
dishes of crawfish stew......!
We awoke this morning to find the skies dark and the weather radar full of
green and the more ominous red flashing warnings of inclement weather so we
waited until the radar and the weather-people forcasted a clearing afternoon
before striking out on our Sunday collecting adventure. As predicted, the
rain and lightning and thunder abated at about noon-time and we jumped into
my truck and headed south!
The very first place we stopped (hold on to your chair, Gator), we managed
to collect about 30 young Cambarus diogenes, the "Devil Crayfish" and many
other specimens of the more common Procambarus clarkii (Swamp Crawfish).
Second stop was the Lake Verret area of south-central cajun country and we
managed to collect many Elassoma zonatum, Heterandria formosa, Fundulus
chrysotus and many male and female individuals of the dwarf crawfish; some
of which are heavily laden with eggs of young dwarf crawfish. Third stop,
still in the Lake Verret drainage, netted many more of the above species.
Third stop, a location for an abundance of water lettuce, frog-bit,
pennywort and azolla yielded even more than that! At this spot, we collected
Bantam sunfish and Heterandria formosa, Fundulus chrysotus and a single
specimen of Lucania parva!
And as bonus, we collected some native terrestrial plants including the
"Red-Iris" which is a very colorful wetlands plant!
More on our collecting adventures tomorrow. We plan to tour other areas and
maybe even sample the local populations of Lepomis (Sunfish) and Pomoxis
(Crappie) and Micropetrus (Bass) and any other large edible species that we
can get on hook and line. For scientific purposes, of course!
Regards,
BG, Matt and Ray
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
/"Unless stated otherwise, comments made on this list do not necessarily
/ reflect the beliefs or goals of the North American Native Fishes
/ Association"
/ This is the discussion list of the North American Native Fishes Association
/ nanfa_at_aquaria.net. To subscribe, unsubscribe, or get help, send the word
/ subscribe, unsubscribe, or help in the body (not subject) of an email to
/ nanfa-request_at_aquaria.net. For a digest version, send the command to
/ nanfa-digest-request_at_aquaria.net instead.
/ For more information about NANFA, visit our web page, http://www.nanfa.org