Sorry about weird spacing in email... Keyboard is all screwed up :(
After I'd paced the house about 40 times this afternoon, my wife asked, no,
make that begged me to do something I wanted to do, else I'd drive us both
insane ;) So I started looking around on my DeLorme and found myself
wandering into some headwater streams I'd been eyebally to west of Toledo.
I called up my friend and email list member Shane Graber who conveniently
lives out that way :) Quick stop into Wally World for legal purposes, and
it was an official trip.
Our first stop was the ditches that make up the headwaters of Bad Creek.
The bottom was fine sand, I guess this is also land influenced by Lake
Erie's predacessor, Lake Warren. Walking was easy, no thick clay to
trudge thru. It seemed that the ditch was well lined with Blue Joint or
Reed Canary Grass, which keeps the bank very stable (with the former much
more desireable as the later is exotic and invasive). We stomped out a
couple submerged patches of the grass. Quickly found our way to some Creek
Chubs and a Stoneroller. Had hoped for a couple Mudminnows, but not bad for
a usually dry ditch.
Not wanting to spend too much time in any one place we then headed over to
another headwater of Bad Creek. It was only about a mile south of the first
spot, however, its substrate was all clay and silt. Crazy glacier, that
thing. We poked in here, nabbed a few Bluntnose Minnows and decided to
move on, as this place didn't really seem condusive to collecting. I
wanted to get on a gradient and out of the fields, so onward we went into
Delta, Ohio.