Sorry we missed ya', but it sounds like you had a great time. I'm glad you
found your pirate perch. Now I can stop looking. (-: BTW, sunscreen with a
value less than 30 is virtually useless in GA. At the beach, I opt for 45.
Steven A. Ellis
Kennesaw, GA
At 10:12 AM 7/28/01 -0500, you wrote:
>I finally have a few minutes to send a message with my collecting results
>from my vacation last week on tybee island-
>
>Since I was spending time with family, and my father can be unpredictable at
>times, I thought it would be best if I didn't plan anything with fellow
>NANFA'ers to avoid any family complications. It's good that I didn't
>because I ended up leaving a day earlier than I expected to.
>
>We camped near a small river that has a fresh water drainage ditch running
>into it.
>I collected sailfin mollies and sheepshead minnows along with the ubiquitous
>gambusia affinis. The ditch also had juvenile shrimp and fiddler crabs. I
>kept the mollies and sheepshead minnows. I'm keeping them in brackish water
>(1.010) right now until I get a tank set up for them. The sheepshead
>surprised me by displaying breeding behavior already. It turns out I have 1
>male and 2 female adults. The male became jet black with a blue iridescence
>on his neck. It's pretty obvious that these fish are related to pupfish as
>their behavior is very similar to that of the red river pupfish I have kept.
>
>When I realized that I could keep blue crabs I collected seining as long as
>they were of legal size, I decided that seining in the river might be a good
>idea after all. I collected only 1 barely legal crab, which I returned. I
>caught a fair number of shrimp that would have been reasonable bait, but
>were only 'popcorn' size. I returned these also as I wasn't going to have a
>lot of time to fish. I caught the neatest fish that I have ever seen - a
>pair of tongue fish. They look pretty much like flounders but with no tail.
>Their dorsal and anal fins taper back to the back of the fish Both eyes are
>on the same side. Neat fish which almost made me start a saltwater
>aquarium. Other salt fish I collected were juvenile black drum, surfperch,
>and mullet.
>
>On the way home, we went south on route 38/84 toward Jesup. I was aiming
>for the griffin ridge WMA for possible collecting opportunities.
>Unfortunately, none of the roads are open to vehicle travel, so
>opportunities were limited. I found one road with a couple of ponds. Only
>one of them had fish, which I thought odd. The pond was only about 40 feet
>across and about 5 feet deep at the deepest. The water was tea colored. In
>this pond I collected heterandria formosa, G. affinis, and a couple of
>centrarchids. One fish was about 1.5 inches long and was turquoise colored.
>I thought it was a pygmy sunfish until I got home. Now, when I look at it
>it seems that I have collected 6 young of the year crappies. It should have
>been obvious, but I really wanted a pygmy sunfish.
>
>I also collected a sunfish like fish I cannot identify. It is about 1.5
>inches long and shaped mostly like a sunfish, but it is rounder. There is a
>teardrop under the eye and hte most striking feature is an eye spot on the
>dorsal fin. The spot is a black dot surrounded by orange. I had thought
>that it might be a bantam sunfish, but it's not found anywhere near georgia.
>Also, the colors on the dorsal fin are not right.
>
>The last collecting spot was the ohoopee river. This river was slow moving
>with a beautiful white sand bottom. The water is strongly tea colored and
>very clean with a bunch of fallen leaves. In this river I collected pirate
>perch, which I have tried to find for years. I also collected a pair of
>madtoms (probably speckled) and a dozen glass shrimp. Does anyone know if
>glass shrimp are native or introduced?
>
>ANyway, after I collected as much as I could, we drove home as fast as we
>could. I found out that my idea of "very water resistant" sunscreen is
>radically different than the manufacturers. My wife and I ended up
>EXTREMELY sunburned from our time on the beach and we could barely stand
>each other's prescence. Home in a hurry seemed like a really good idea, so
>I drove through Atlanta and Chatanooga without a 'howdy' to Steven and
>Casper, for which I'm sorry. I'm at home now doing an impression of a
>lizard shedding.S
>
>Geoff Kimber
>Lexington,KY
>
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