Estill Fork, With Snow On The Ground!

Well, not lots of snow, but I think it's the first time I've been there with any snow on the ground. Water temperature was 6 deg. C, and air temp was about 0 deg. C when we arrived. We went primarily to do the darter habitat partitioning survey work for Brian's thesis work, and also to get darters for Robert's darter gill parasite project. Six people went, which made it relatively easy, me, Brian, Robert, Doug, Jeremy and Heather. We found many more fish than on previous visits, largely because our take of rainbow darters was huge including many juveniles. Also, we found lots of both stripetail and fantail darters, including a large number of juveniles in a few locations in our transects. It was cold but not unbearably so. In the first picture below, Robert and Doug do their respective tasks of timekeeping and data recording while Brian is in the stream taking depth and current flow readings.

Here's my traditional shot looking across Estill Fork to the east from where we park. The stream was full today, unlike our last visit in November when it was in low flood.

Brian prepares for our first transect.

Brian doing a current flow reading, while Jeremy on the far shore pretends to hold the end of the survey tape. Notice how clear the water is around Brian, in a spot where the water is about 40 cm deep. That's the area where we found lots of juvenile stripetails, and to a lesser degree juvenile fantails; they were even more common about a meter closer to the near bank where the stream ran through a hole about 70 cm deep.