Trip To Chattanooga: South Chickamauga Creek & Casper's Pool

I spent most of the day on Saturday with a bunch of NANFA people in Chattanooga seining for fish in South Chickamauga Creek, and looking at Casper's fish collection in his pool (some of you may understand the full significance of converting a swimming pool into a fish pond). South Chick was high and fast, and relatively turbid, carrying runoff north from its Georgia origins through Chattanooga on its way to the nearby Tennessee River. It's a surprisingly well-preserved urban stream even with that, usually clear water flowing over sand and jagged rocks. I took an amazing fall trying to cross the creek at a narrow point, but was able to execute my move of grabbing my glasses as I was knocked down by the water. I now have several new scars on my left leg; who needs tattoos?

Casper lives on a bluff over South Chick, so we parked in his yard and made our way down a trail through the woods to a suspended foot bridge over the creek. I finally saw the "fishes of South Chickamauga" display signage that Casper's son Coby had helped to build for an Eagle Scout project. It was great! (see photo below) Snail darters have been found in this creek, but we didn't net any. We did find warpaint shiners, bluntnose minnows, redline darters, dusky darters, logperch, hogsuckers, six species (I think) of sunfish and bass, steelcolor shiners and satinfin shiners, and I probably forgot a few. Here are some photos of the day.

Here are (l to r) Alejandro, Ranger Bob, and Coby looking at a bag of fish; bluntnose minnows and young warpaints, I think?

Here are Casper and Anna (science director of the Tennessee Aquarium) watching people across the creek netting and roll around in the creek.

Here is the fishes display board, looking over Dave's shoulder. NANFA contributed some of the money for this board (the logo is in the lower right of the board), and I'd forgotten that I'd given them my longear sunfish photo from Sipsey Fork.

Here's a view of Casper's fish pool. The deeper area is covered with a mat of aquatic plants, and the shallows have water-tolerant irises and cypress along with a pump/filtration system. The list of species in this pool is long; killifish, sunfish, redhorse, chubsuckers,... It's an excellent chance to see many of these species close up in clear water.

Here's Casper doing his snorkel thing in the pool (really, he's not dead).

And here's five people snorkeling, kind of a NANFA pool party. Betsy (Mrs. Ranger Bob) is sitting along the pool in the upper right.

Finally, here's a shot of one of the irises growing in the shallows. I know them as "blue flags", but that's maybe not the best name? Some yellow ones were in flower, too.