Estill Fork For All The Darters We Could Catch

We went out to Estill Fork at the Baptist Church site today to collect darters for Robert's gill parasite project. It was a cool, clear day, with a good solid water flow as you can see in the picture above. That view is pretty much the area we worked. We were interested in tennessee snubnose, rainbow, fantail, stripetail and redline darters, and kept a banded just as a voucher of sorts. To get the fantails and stripetails, we set the seine and kick and disturb rocks just upstream of it, since those two species more than others are hunkering down around rocks. And it worked well for us.
This spot used to be a ford across Estill Fork before the bridge was built, since it has exposed bedrock not always too deep. Above are Robert and Brian on the road leading into the ford from the east, with the baptist church behind them. Needless to say, this is an easy access point once you find it.
At the end of our trip Robert waded out into the pool at the ford to net a few more large stripetails, which was successful. Fantails and stripetails are pretty similar until you pick up the distinguishing traits, like stripetails have a dark submarginal band on the first dorsal that fantails don't, and the stripetails have some vertical banding on their sides while fantails typically have lateral lines of dots. We're interested in them because they seem to carry more parasites than the tennessee snubs in particular, which are the most common darter in this system.