sorry about the repost of the taimen URL- tried to forward it to a friend
before I'd had my coffee this morning, and next thing I knew...
Anyway, yesterday I ventured down to the Cahaba, watched several trios of
river redhorse spawn, and did a bit of collecting. What an excellent day to
be out on the river- only things I kept were some Pimephales vigilax for gar
food, but released probably on the order of 40+spp. Rainbow shiners are at
their peak nuptial coloration right now- you can see the blue pectorals and
heads from 10m away! Wow!
As for drab fish, I did something I haven't done in a very long time last
week- I broke down and bought three homalopterans from a pet store (figured
they'd be worth it at least for the ichthyology teaching collection!). These
might almost rank up there as being as cool as sculpins. I haven't figured
out what species yet (only books I've got cover upland forms that I'd wager
require colder water than things that would wind up in the pet trade), but
I'm working on it. They went into a high-current riffle tank with some
chrosomus and a logperch... which led to one of the funniest things I've
ever seen happen in an aquaria. The homalopterans immediately headed for the
bottom- the logperch was behind a rock and didn't see them enter the tank.
He came out and started foraging, flipped a couple of rocks, and then tried
to flip one of the homalopterans over! The loach took off, leaving the
logperch there with (excuse me for anthropomorphizing) a look of total
amazement! The logperch then swam up to the loach (sizing it up?), watching
its little operculae flare, and must have watched it for 10min or so. Well,
maybe you had to be there...
Bruce, it sounds like you're getting the hang of Alabama fish IDs... we need
to get out and hit the upper Paint Rock soon- give you a chance to REALLY
test your skills on some Hydrophlox ;)
cheers,
Dave
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