It's Alabama, And My Seine Net Froze!

We had successful trips on Friday and Monday to collect scarlet shiners. At Limestone Creek we were able to catch dozens at a time by spotting aggregations in the open water and scooping them out with a seine. I have about 30 still alive in 4 tanks, which means we'll have to go out and collect about 20 more live ones probably on Friday. And on Monday we made it out to Estill Fork in the hamlet of Estill Fork. Working upstream from the old ford there we were able to collect about 20 with some difficulty in the exquisitely clear water. One shoreline had ice on it, and of course the fish were congregating under the ice cover. Pulling out netfulls of ice with the fish is tough business. We caught most of our fish in one seine haul just downstream of an exposed sand bar after breaking through the thin ice. This was my first collecting trip in Alabama in which the net would freeze upon being pulled out of the water. But by the end of our trip the temperature had risen above freezing and we didn't have that problem. Andrew, Daniel and Sandy went along on both trips.

We also found a surprisingly large number of washboard mussels, Megalonaias nervosa, in Estill Fork Some of them were as big as dinner plates. I had never observed them in Estill Fork before, although admittedly I hadn't looked. This is a large, thick-shelled species that rests on top of the substrate. They were the basis of the commercial mussel trade because of the high quality of their shells. I'm sure other species are present too, we didn't muck around in the cold water trying to dig them out.