Multiple Size Classes Of Silver Shiners In The Flint

I think we're making progress solving one question from the last year. We've caught mostly large, adult silver shiners in our work. This begs the question of the population structure of the species, i.e. what size are given year classes and how many of them are there relative to adults. In the last several weeks we've made several collection of smaller silver shiners. Last Sunday Stefanie and I caught a bunch of fish I thought were all scarlet shiners. Upon closer examination in the lab, we realize that almost half of them are silver shiners, in the size range 50-68 mm SL. And Josh netted a bunch of silver shiners downstream in the Flint that are in the size range 70-85 mm SL, almost the size of ones we've typically caught. As we've learned more about silver shiners in terms of their preferred microhabitats in the river we're finally catching a more diverse population. It doesn't sound like much, but I'm happy!