Another fish you should look for in that area is the
Elegant Madtom, its a very pretty Madtom. I believe I
caught several there, but at the time I didn't know
how to tell the difference between Northern Mountain,
and Elegant Madtoms so I let them go.
In the County seat of Liberty, just east of the main
drag there is a waste treatment plant next to the
Green River. A series of Riffles has the same darter
species already mentioned (not spotted afaik) and you
can catch spotfin shiners. I know its a common fish,
but they are really pretty this time of year and make
excellent aquarium fish, always active and curious.
Being crevice spawners they shouldnt be that hard to
spawn either.
Klaus
--- geoff <gkimber2_at_alltel.net> wrote:
> We had a very nice weekend here in teh bluegrass, so
> my wife and I decided
> to gather up the kids and do a little collecting.
> We went to teh confluence
> of Casey creek in Casey county, KY. We colelcted
> there last summer and
> found orangefin, spotted, and orangethroat darters
> there last summer. I was
> unable to identifiy the first two, so I didn't keep
> any at the time, wanting
> to avoid collecting an endangered species. I have
> reserached and found that
> neither of these species is listed at the federal or
> state level, so off we
> went.
>
> We got a late start due to other commitments. We
> arrived at about 3pm, with
> plenty of daylight left to sample the local
> critters.
>
> Casey creek is covered with limestone gravel. Deep
> holes have a gray clay
> base. The clay almost as hard as rock, and it does
> not get stirred up no
> matter how hard you try. There is a canoe launch
> into the casey crek at
> this point, and the area is maintained as a state
> park whose name I cannot
> remember.
>
> The water is of course much deeper now than it was
> last summer. Colder too.
> Made me really glad for the neoprene waders, but the
> boys got a bit cold as
> they don't have any.
>
>
> I did not collect any orangefin or spotted darters,
> but I did collect:
>
> orangethroat darters in full breeding colors
> speckled darters (also in full color)
> logperch
> fantail darters
> f catenatus (a bunch of juvenile)
> stonerollers
> creek chub
> common shiners
> 'minners' - shiny things that I did not take the
> time to ID
> american brook lamprey (I think)
>
> I also caught a small slider turtle and a salamander
>
>
> The biggest surprise was of course the lampreys. I
> thought I saw one at
> first, but was unable to catch it. Then, my wife
> saw something odd looking
> and lunged the net to get it. We caught another
> live one by surprise, but I
> also found a nearly dead lamprey on the margin of
> the creek. I kept the
> dying lamprey and its in my fridge (now dead).
>
> We were rather amazed at the colors of the speckled
> darters. The males have
> an orange throat and 4 or 5 intensely sky blue
> patches on their sides. This
> was really surprising because I do not remember
> these fish the last time I
> collected here.
>
> My boys were enthralled with the turtle and
> salamander, which we returned
> whence they came.
>
> I also was able to collect stonerollers, which I
> have needed for algae duty
> in a couple of my tanks. You may recall that I had
> a really hard time
> collecting stonerollers this winter - they seemed to
> go into zombie mode and
> they were very hard to find. The water temp was
> around 60 degrees and they
> were back to acting like stonerollers again. I
> collected them in the
> fastest water by the netfull.
>
> Anyway, it got dark so we had to head home. A good
> day fishing is *much*
> better than a good day working. It was great to get
> outside and in the
> water with my family.
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> / reflect the beliefs or goals of the North American
> Native Fishes
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