It's True, It Was A Beautiful Day At Estill Fork

Brittany and Taito joined me for a telescope shiner collecting trip to Estill Fork yesterday. It was sunny and mild, in the low 50's F. The water was fairly high, clear, and flowing fast and cold at 7 deg. C. We were able to net about 50 telescope shiners in about 1.5 hours, definitely the mark of a good trip. We also saw lots of darters, since they usually share the same microhabitat of riffles and scourholes as the telescopes. The rainbow and bluesided males especially were coloring up, although the male snubnoses were well advanced too. Once again I'm leaning to thinking that both black darters and what used to be tennessee darters are present in these tributaries to the Paint Rock River. I know that I saw a coloring-up male black darter yesterday.

I'll have to post pictures later, including my drift net deployed; it works!