We Found Silverstripes At Borden Creek

Today was a clear, not horribly cold day after rain and ice off and on over the last several days. On the last day of my permit from the Forest Service we went to Borden Creek in the Bankhead National Forest to collect silverstripe shiners for our study of fish brain size and structure out of breeding season. Here's a view of typical silverstripes we found; many were bigger than these.
Today was definitely a waders day. It's an awkward thing to put them on in public as Taito and Andrew are doing here. The banks along the creek are mostly sand, the remnants of ground-down sandstone and limestone.

The creek was high and fast, but cutlines along the sandy banks showed that the level had been up at least a foot in the very recent past. The water is carrying enough sand that it has a greenish color, below. We caught fish below the riffle at the right of the photo.

A group of backpackers walked by us as we were doing our last seines. One guy asked the classic question: "Are you fishing?" It was all I could do not to say that we were racing submarines... Later, on our way out across the bridge, the backpackers were sprawled out in the sun. They asked why we were collecting the fish, and I told them that we were examining the brains for evidence of changes related to sex and reproduction. I think four out of five of them let their jaws drop. I was able to point one of them upstream to a series of deep holes since he wanted to fish for coosa (redeye) bass. I've seen them in years past in these holes at the base of large boulders, and I'd guess that they're there today. We left before we saw them catch any, I hope they did.