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NFC: First collecting trip of the season

     Started my collecting yesterday. My 2 boys and I plus a couple of
friends decided to see what we could find in some of the local creeks.
At the first site we found several Greenside darters, Orangethroat
darters, Mottled sculpins, Northern hogsuckers, Creek chubs, plus other
unidentified minnows.
     The second site was where the REAL excitement started. We showed up
at the second site and while standing on the bank noticed some large
fish sitting in the pool before a large area of ripples. On a closer
look we realized these were gar. Now I have collected in thes spot for
the last 2 years and never saw a gar. This area is up a small stream
about a mile from where in joins the White River. We realized that they
could be spawning and decided to get a closer look. We went down stream
and got in the water and came back up slowly so as not to disturb them.
We got to within a foot of where they were spawning before they noticed
us. We decided to stand still and see if they would come back, they did.
We were actually able to stand in the creek and have Longnose Gar spawn
at our feet. As good as this sounds it gets better. Over in the actual
ripples there were some other fish that we figured were spawning. They
ended up being Shortnose Redhorse. Also at our feet were 100's of
Stonerollers in full breeding colors. Some of the males were moving the
rocks around like they were making nests. We figured they were spawing
also and probably eating any gar eggs they found. We stood there for
about 1/2 an hour just watching everything going on around us. There was
another fish mixed in with this orgy, but haven't been able to ID it
yet.
     We decided to try to catch some of these fish in order to get a
better look and be able ti ID them. We didn't catch them but did get 2
big redhorse. I picked the first one up a milt came out. Joe pickec up
the other one and eggs came out ot it. We decided to put them back into
the water right away. As soon as we did, I thought that we should have
tried to aritifically inseminate some of the eggs and take them home to
hatch out. Oh well maybe next time. We did collect about 50 gar eggs to
try to hatch out at home.  Also took some pictures but the camera was
one of those point and shoot cameras and do not know how they came out.
Not bad for an afternoon in the creeks. Also went to another spot and
collected some SRBD.


  A fish addict,
   Bill F.