We Found Lots Of Flame Chubs In Little Cypress Creek Yesterday

We visited 4 historic flame chub sites in Lauderdale County, AL, yesterday along Little Cypress Creek. At each site we caught at least one flame chub. The area is in pretty good shape landuse-wise, so I'm not so surprised. Above is my team standing on the edge of the sweet spot of the day, Olive Spring. The spring is right behind them, a series of water vents forming a pool just off of Little Cypress Creek. In 2 seine sweeps we caught 6 flame chubs, and we could have caught lots more if we'd kept going. This spring was collected 7 times in 1974, yielding hundreds of flame chubs (I still don't know why taking that many was necessary). This stretch of creek, maybe 1.5 km south of the Tennessee border, also has large numbers of scarlet shiners and rosyfin dace all in eyepopping breeding coloration. 300 meters back along the road, a tributary to this system, Dry Branch, was one long spring. Water kept bubbling up through the gravel in a series of low hisses, and formed several deeper pools. We found flame chubs in that stretch, too, which represents 2 of the sites on my master list of 151. We even netted some juvenile flame chubs, a first this season. The other 2 sites we hit, about 5 and 12 km south, respectively, were more of the same. The southernmost site was fairly broad but we found a flame chub up against a bank. In the photo above you'll see Bessie the Bassett, who followed us down the creek. Her owner told us that Bessie just showed up one day, usually hangs around, and eagerly eats. I guess that's the way bassetts are..

Next week we'll hit another creek system in Lauderdale County, maybe Cypress Creek just to the west of Little Cypress. I suspect that we'll find flame chubs there, too. So now my tally is 38 sites visited, and 15 sites have produced flame chubs.