I'm Happy, We Had A Good Day At Estill Fork

It was a cold day today, maybe not even 40 deg. F, but our trip to Estill Fork went well. Andrew, Brittany and James went, and everybody had waders. Andrew's weren't insulated but at least he stayed dry. I found that the waders I've been using now have a small leak in the left boot, just enough to be annoying after 2 hours when your sock is wet. But I think I can fix it.

Anyway, the water temperature had dropped to 6 deg. C, but we all noticed that the water was very clear today; it was no problem seeing fish in the stream. We started with some seining by the low bridge, and actually caught a few telescope shiners this time. This involved dodging the deer carcass that someone had thoughtfully tossed into the pool below the bridge... Below is an image of the stream coming into the bridge, flowing fast, clear and cold out of the mountains to the north.

We went about 300 meters downstream and found a really productive series of riffles and fast flowing pools. Over about an hour we caught ~45 telescope shiners, but only maybe 4 scarlets. And as usual we caught unbelievable numbers of striped shiners. But we also found some interesting darters, not surprisingly, since we were in primo habitat for a number of species: fantails, Tennessees, rainbows, redlines, a stripetail, and the best of all, a blueside with those amazing turquoise rectangles on the side. James took the blueside home for his aquarium, and I kept the two redlines for the scarlet shiner/black darter aquarium in my lab. I think I have a pair. And the good news is that no one fell into the creek, I think I came closest.

Below is a shot of James, Andrew and Brittany processing the fish, putting the shiners in the clove oil solution for euthanasia and the darters we kept into a bait bucket.

And here's a closer view of that set-up, with a few deceased telescope shiners floating on the surface of the clove oil solution. Poking into the bottom of the photo is a beaver stick that James picked up from the water, one of many.

We hope to go back to Estill Fork at the end of January, I don't think it could be much colder. And next week we should finally run the Western blots to measure NMDAR proteins in the brains we prepared last month, at least I hope so!