NANFA-- green river collecting

geoff and julie kimber (gkimber2_at_earthlink.net)
Sun, 21 Jul 2002 22:15:17 -0400

Just a short note on what my family and I found this weekend along the green
river. Nothing to match the skills of Steven or Casper.

We first fished with hook and line below the green river lake dam. Noah (5)
and I fished while the other guys played on the playground. Noah caught his
first fish on hook and line - a small green sunfish that ambushed his worm as
he was bringing it back to cast again.

While we were fishing, Julie and the other boys (Daniel 7 and Samuel 4)
decided they wanted to go swimming. Seeing the writing on the wall, Noah and
I quit fishing and went to look at a nice box turtle Julie caught in the
water. Yes, it was a box turtle, yes it was in the water, on the bottom
looking stuck. We returned it to the forest.

While I was looking at the turtle, Noah told me he wanted to catch the fish
with the orange spots. Turned out to be a whole school of fundulus catenatus
cruising around. I ran up to the car and got the seine and after a few
minutes,we scored the entire school (about 12), including a couple of really
nice males.

We packed up and spent a while hunting down a place to fish. We finally found
a really nice teeny tiny state park that included a 1 car parking lot, and the
confluence of two small streams. The big pool where they met was about 3 feet
deep and the water was crystal clear. We could see a school of common shiners
(we netted them later) milling about looking for someting to eat to come
downstream.

We didn't catch too many different fish, but the area is really beautiful.
The kids had a great time swimming and fishing. Noah caught quite a few fish
by himself and with me seining. Julie is looking for an excuse to go back.

While we were there, we caught:

common shiner
creek chub
central stoneroller
fundulus catenatus
rosefin shiners (pretty common here)

bluegill

orangefin darter
spotted darter
logperch
orangethroat darter
rainbow darter
greenside darter

I'm pretty sure I caught both rainbow and orangethroat. I'm more familiar with
rainbow

Anyway - a good time with the family. Julie is pretty much hooked on
collecting. All I have to do is be sure that there is a place to play for the
kids and I am home free. If the kids can play safely, I even have someone who
likes to seine and doesn't mind getting wet. She's not all that fond of mud,
though.

In case you are interested, the nature conservance has a small slide show of
darters inthe green river drainage. Look here:

http://nature.org/wherewework/northamerica/states/kentucky/slideshows/sld67.h
tml#

Geoff Kimber
Lexington,KY
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