We Found No Stippled Studfish In These Creeks

In reverse order, here are the creeks in Tallapoosa County, AL, we visited on Saturday to see if they still have stippled studfish (Fundulus bifax). None of them did...

Below is Josie Leg Creek. The area is under surprisingly heavy development, with areas in the wood having been scraped clean for some sort of housing. The creek has a new bridge over it, and the road in is freshly scraped dirt. Much of this dirt is now in the creek. We found lots of striped shiners, pretty shiners and creek chubs but no studfish. Below is James looking stricken and Andrew facing the other direction.


Emuckfaw Creek is just north of the Horseshoe Bend battlefied where Andrew Jackson was almost killed by the Creek Indians in the 1810's before his Cherokee bodyguards saved him, and the U.S. forces carried the day. The creek is drop-dead beautiful, with an old highway bridge upstream of the current bridge. We spent about two hours seining every possible corner of the riffle/pool areas, and found many fish species but no studfish. I'm tempted to revisit this site later and make sure; it's in good enough shape that in principle it should still have studfish.



And we began our day at Sandy Creek, on the southern side of the Tallapoosa River. This creek shows clear evidence of siltation, which isn't good for studfish that prefer sandy creek bottoms. We found pretty shiners, in particular, and even kept netting hogsuckers. But no stippled studfish. We also found a freshly discarded porno DVD, which I guess is better than finding recently executed dogs.

So, no stippled studfish were found. Maybe that's the story? We've now found studfish at two of five sites we've visited. Our next trip is likely to be March 29.