NANFA-- Cool trip out in Eastern Fulton County

Todd Crail (farmertodd_at_buckeye-express.com)
Sun, 23 Mar 2003 23:30:55 -0500

The sun was setting and we thought we'd try and get one other watershed
in before dark. We initially chose Bear Creek with belongs to the River
Raisin watershed, which is an interesting one because it goes from high
quality headwaters in Michigan to high modification and channelization by
the time it gets to Lake Erie. But... Tenmile Creek called again :)

We ended up in what had to be the tenth mile lol. It looked more like a
ditch here than anything. It will be interesting to go back with more time
and walk it to the source. The substrate was clay instead of the usual
sand and gravel (we were just west of the Oak Openings), but the water was
crystal clear and again had a good stabilization of grasses along the
sides. A nice channel ran through the bed and there was prime habitat in
grasses laying in the water.

First we popped up the usual suspects... Bluntnose and Creek Chubs. Oh
and some freakin' "soooo dead now" goldfish. I was hoping to run into a
Grass Pickerel or two, but suddenly the real treat of the trip
appeared....

"Hey! Are those darters!? Oh my gosh! They look like Least Darters!!"

Yeppers, some E. microperca made fortunate sideway jaunts into the seine
and were spotted at the last second. 5 in all. This is pretty exciting
because, as was verified when I got home, they hadn't been seen in
Tenmile for the last 50+ years, according to the literature in hand. My
sources were '83 Fishes of Ohio and all Ohio EPA data from the 90's. In any
case, isn't the resilience of Life grand? :)

There were some other high quality indicators as well from the invert
world. Caddisfly larvae, amphipod like critters, and all sorts of things
I don't normally see around here. It became dark quick, so we only got to
see about 30 yards of this location. Pretty exciting stuff. I'm quite
hopeful to really begin to learn the ways of all Ten Miles hehheh.

Took one Least specimen home for verification and photography.
Photography was interesting. How do you get a pic of something that
small??? Well, soon I'd raided the kitchen, and was using one of Mrs.
Crail's nice drinking glasses.... And I won't tell if you don't ;)

http://www.farmertodd.com/nanfa/032303LeastDarter/

That *is* normal sized gravel, by the way ;)

So, it was a good day out, despite the lack of diversity. Definate strong
finish and hopefully a forecast of finds to come :)

Todd

I hope you know that this will go down on your permenant record.
http://www.farmertodd.com
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