Transecting In The Rain

We made it out to Estill Fork yesterday to do our transect sampling for Brian's project. The stream was still high from rains the previous two days. We were able to finish three of the typical eight transects we do before a sustained rainfall started. That was OK, we're tough and all that, but the flowmeter got a little wet at the connecting jack and stopped working, which pretty much ended the day since a key part of the working is relating stream flow to darter presence. I have it drying out in a dessicator jar, and hopefully it will work again without any heroic electronic work. It's a fairly simple device, but if it's dead we seriously face having to buy a replacement to finish this work, a mere $250. We were catching interesting fish even in the relatively deep water, including several blotchside logperch, a surprising number of greensides, and along with the usual suspects we caught johnny and blueside darters. I think we did enough work so that the data will suffice, even a little bit short. My cell phone got a little wet and stopped working too, even in a cooler, but luckily has snapped back.