The Heavy Lifting: Estill Fork On Friday, Flint On Saturday

We went out to Estill Fork on Friday afternoon to collect darters for Robert's project, and to the Flint River on Saturday to do the transect work for Brian's project. Both rivers were fairly high, not too high but high enough so that pulling a seine net was a challenge at both. The first photo is of Robert and Jeremy walking downstream at the end of our collection at Estill Fork, the "Baptist Church" site.

The darters are in breeding coloration now, since it's really early spring. We netted several large, colored up male greenside darters including the one below. We also caught some of the biggest sculpins I've seen in local streams.

We had beautiful weather at the Flint on Saturday, with the water level just within the limit we can work in. It's the closest I've been to having a seine net pulled out of my hands, with the complication of uncertain footing. Luckily we got out intact, although Alex halfway slipped in before recovering. The photo is of Brian as we prepared to leave.

And in another hand-held shot, here's one of the electric male banded darters we caught. They always have a distinctive emerald green banding pattern, now it's strongly enhanced.