Tim Smith

Sounds like a great trip, Scott.

HA! You need your own TV show, Andy! I have a Tomerelli largemouth print and then a bunch of my own stuff...mostly fish.

Well maybe it's time to find out how lucky you were, Rich. edit...or are those being saved for posterity?

Hey! Whatever happened to the flies from the contest at the blowout? Did anyone try to fish them yet?

Nice one, Ben! If the local CPO can't handle it, they will know who can. If you had a liscence plate and a description of the trash, I bet that would be enough to get a fine levied.

Gotta love the Middle Fork of the Vermilion (Vermilion Country). That whole area is really nice... ...pretty good smallie fishing on the Salt Fork too.

Smallies are common in the areas where rusties have invaded. They (and the other larger predator fish that are there) can make a difference in rustie numbers, but the strongest determinant of crayfish numbers is the available cover. Bass can't catch crayfish out of rock refuges until they come out into the open. They also have a hard time finding them in dense stands of rooted vegetation. If you fill up a lake with rock, you are filling it up with crayfish. Vegetation will hold them as well (until they graze it down). What you'll see in lakes with predators and crayfish are "grazing halos". The crayfish live in cover and come out at night to graze. They can travel a certain distance from cover before they have to retreat at the end of the night. The vegetation inside the "halo" where the crayfish can forage gets hammered pretty hard. Crayfish that get caught out of cover in day light areas get eaten (unless they are too large...10% of bass body length excluding the tail unless they are molting). Remember too that rusties have a nasty pinch compared to most crayfish. They do a better job of fighting off bass than most other crayfish species.

Still invasive. By far. I would guess that the people having to buy new water intakes still consider them invasive, and it's probably true too that we haven't seen all the effects of zebra mussels yet. Remember too that the Great Lakes are connected to the Illinois River which is connected to the Mississippi River valley. Billions of veligers enter the Illinois River from the Great Lakes (sometimes that many every day). The Lake Michigan zebra mussel population is considered a source population for the entire Mississippi basin. That makes them a threat to biota from the Rocky Mountains to Appalacians (although there are many stable sub-populations that have taken over that role). Malacologists expect there will eventually be numerous extinctions of native mussels due to the presence of zebra mussels. ...BUT...over time the way the biota around them are responding to them has changed a bit. Numerous fish species eat them now (ironcially including round goby, but also many natives). The changes in water clarity associated with zebra mussels seem to be a somewhat of a beneficial by-product, although the long term effects of that are still playing themselves out.

This one's from Mark K on jim_b's carp thread. I think it's a pretty cool question. Here's an opinion... The two things that matter most about ecosystems are their ecosystem functions and services (clean water, fisheries, lumber, aesthetics...things we use), and biodiversity (different kinds of species, genotypes, ecosystems, habitats). As long as a new species modifies an ecosystem to the point that it is a threat to ecosystem function or biodiversity (i.e. it might cause extinction or cause the loss of a natural resource), then it's invasive. As the native biota adapt or die off and the system is "stable" again, then a species begins to deserve the term "native". Carp have been here less than 200 years. That's still a new arrival compared to how long it takes for new species to evolve. There are still some species like blue sucker and river redhorse plus some minnow species that are hanging on by their fingernails and might be suffering from their presence. I'd say that one's still invasive.

Some people call that a "trophic block", Ben. The Asian carp (and common carp) consume resources that get tied up in their biomass until they die. Gizzard shad do the same thing, but less dramatically. There are plenty of reservoirs around with 90% gizzard shad biomass. I'm totally buying all the observations of smallmouth feeding behind carp, but jim's original question was "are they a neutral species". Do you guys think the positive direct effects of feeding associations outweighs the negative effects of carp? That should probably be a two part question...are they negative toward smallmouth, and are they negative for the rivers overall?

HA! Love it! Remember Squanto? Good point here, Mark. Smallies are native in some areas in Canada and not native in others. A study from Northeast Ontario showed that during spring, stocked smallies compete with lake trout for the resources in the shallow areas of the lake. Apparently, that onshore migration and feeding was a critical time for lake trout growth. The results have been very negative for native lake trout and have directly impacted that fishery. Smallies are also not native in Texas. A stocking program for smallies there has resulted in hybridization with Guadelupe bass, a black bass species that ONLY occurs in Texas. The likely result will be extinction of the Guadelupe bass although recovery efforts are ongoing. Nor are smallies native to the west coast, where they eat huge numbers of native trout and salmon smolts. ...and God forgive whoever thought it would be a good idea to stock them in BELIZE, where I recently noticed someone has done just that. Imagine tossing a smallie into a tropical tank at the pet store to get a feel for the havoc they're likely to cause there. It's all about the local biota being adapted to each other. Species from outside the system are more likely to be disruptive (and sometimes disasterous). The more disruptions we heap on our streams, the more problems we're likely to have.

Banking fish is not the only option. European carp anglers practice catch and release to prevent depletion of carp populations. There are business proposals being considered right now to convert Asian carp from the Illinois River basin to animal feeds (although I haven't heard anything about the status of that proposal since the die-off last year). Common carp could be managed the same way. Some people catch common carp for personal consumption as well. More power to them all (although do check for toxin levels in the streams you fish if you are eating common carp...they're generally not very clean). I'm afraid I'll have to politely disagree with the idea that all fish were created equal. Our country is having a hard enough time behaving as if all people were created equal. I don't see that we have the virtue or resources to extend that ethic to fish. A smallmouth bass, or a blue sucker or a river redhorse in the Midwest US is not ethically equivalent to a carp or a round goby or an Asian carp...or even a striped bass for that matter. Exotics alter and often damage the systems they invade. Native fish are adapted to local conditions and give us the best chance for sustainable, high diversity systems into the future. What would your local smallmouth populations look like without carp living with them? That's hard to say without doing experiments, but the streams I know that have low carp populations are some of the highest quality waters around (admittedly it's a little hard to say what's cause and what's effect in some of those cases). The chief saving virtue of carp from an ecological standpoint might be that they repress algae growth in streams by making the water cloudy. Given the current loads of nutrients in our rivers and the potential for harmful algae growth, that activity may be more useful than we realize. If not, I submit the streams of Illinois would be much better off if jim b's buddies in the carp club were ten times more numerous and they were keeping the carp they caught. Heck, they might be better conservationists than we smallmouth anglers are.

I've also never had a carp ruin a fishing day (although I have noticed that if I spook the suckers in a hole, the smallies disappear too). That's a really cool observation, Gary. I've read fisheries journal articles about trout doing the same thing with white suckers. You may have some grad student's project lined up right there! But... wouldn't smallies also follow a native bottom-feeder around if the carp hadn't out-competed it? I'm afraid I'm a giant scrooge where carp are concerned. Carp are definitely responsible for uprooting plants and sucking up a lot of invertebrate forage. It's that forage that's critical to the growth of young of the year smallies. Its the success of the young of the year that determines how many new fish will enter the fishery in the future. Carp also reduce water clarity by suspending sediment...in some ways that's a good thing, because it helps reduce the light on the stream bed and knock back algae growth...but it also means that many of our rivers have no chance of ever being as clear as they once were. On the whole, I see them as a big negative. To be fair, they inhabit some of the most degraded systems in the world that didn't get that way because of anything a carp did...but some of the nicer places would be even nicer if carp weren't around. Carp are here to stay. I don't like it, but we can't get rid of them. Personally, I'm 100% behind carp fishing. I am not, however, supportive of catch and release for that species in North America. That makes sense in Euope where carp are native but not in the US where they are invasive.

That was my idea too, jimb, but I spoke to Steve J. recently and he said those two marks made a downward pointing, triangle-shaped wound at the front edge of that discoloration. We can't see it clearly in the photo, so we're guessing other things, but that's the kind of wound a heron leaves, so Steve was probably right all along.

The differences in growth due to environmental factors would give you a wide range of things to say about black bass growth and still be correct in some lake or stream or another. Diet, age, stress and temperature have a huge influence on growth rates. Smallmouth and largemouth growth rates tend to be similar during the first year (with a slight edge to largemouth in some systems), and then largemouth tend to grow faster in later years. The growth of males of both species gets bogged down by the stress of spawning. The maximum age of largemouth and smallmouth is less than 20 years (I think one largemouth might have broken that record...but my memory is 19 years, not 20). A fish of that age is senescent and probably isn't growing much at all. None of that is intended to contradict the original point...pinching barbs is exactly the right thing to do, and older fish are in general bigger fish.

Hi Jim. You know, the season for river clean-ups is upon us. Do you think the city might be willing to help organize a volunteer effort? The turn out for those is increasing every year.

That's the stream, Steve. The rusties were in Jackson, back in '99 but are now moving into Praire. There is a study underway right now by Chris Taylor to look at their specific effects on the food web as they enter that stream. That will be a first for Illinois. I think the invasion into Prairie Creek was a simple migration upstream. ...and I think it's southern Indiana and Kentucky where they are native, not northern Indiana.

Rusties were responsible for drastically reducing the amount of aquatic vegetation in numerous lakes in the upper midwest. Ironically, they came from a bait bucket introduction in Wisconsin and northern Illinois, but they are native to Indiana and Kentucky. In Wisconsin, rusties attain large sizes very quickly and also have larger claws than the native crayfish in the area. Rapid early growth gets them out of their vulnerable early stages and increases their survival and their densities. Large body size and large claws also helps them fight with other crayfish more successfully to compete for refuge. Crayfish that can't find good refuge are exposed to fish predators and have much lower survival rates. Rusties also hybridize with the clear-water crayfish and will gradually eliminate them from habitat by forcing the females of other species to produce infertile hybrids. Rusties affect not only plants and other crayfish, but also other invertebrate species. Streams and rivers and especially lakes change dramatically when rusties enter an area. Studies at Michigan State also indicate rusties may be successful predators on fish eggs. I was involved with a study on Jackson and Prairie Creeks at the old Joliet Arsenal in which we trapped crayfish and recorded their behaviors and responses to bird predators. At the time, Praire Creek had no rusties and we trapped about just a few crayfish per night in each trap. That's typical for a nightly set in a stream. In Jackson Creek, we trapped up to 100 rusty crayfish per night. Their densities were just staggering. While that seems like a robust forage base for smallmouth and other species (and we did collect some big smallies there) it is important to remember that the rusties got that dense because for the most part, they were difficult to catch. Combine that with their effects on fish eggs, the loss of alternative forage types, the loss of plant cover and rusties are bad news for a fishery. Presently, the range of rusty crayfish is still expanding in Illinois. They are present in Dawson Lake near Bloomington, which means they will probably eventually enter the Sangamon basin rivers. They are common in the Rock (and must also be in the Kankakee). I'm pretty sure they're common in the Chicago area as well (although I don't have a specific memory of where and I don't have a map or journal here to find out). Basically...they're coming soon to a stream near you...and.. ...unfortunately, rusties are probably here to stay. There are programs underway to study rusty crayfish eradication through means such as bottom trawling, but the prognosis for that method seems bleak. We're going to have to learn to live with them and just do our best to slow their advance as much as we can. It is also unfortunate that we anglers have been blamed for the spread of rusties. This is a good case study for why it is a bad idea to carry bait from one system to another, even if the other system is just a short distance away. Rusties can be identified a rust colored spot that occurs on the sides of their abdomens (the cephalothorax) just ahead of the tail. They should also have black rings near the tips of the claws with a paler orange area at the extreme tip. No other crayfish in Illinois will have those things together.

Very cool, Marc. I notice that the Yorkville Dam is not on there. Is that because they've decided to refurbish it already? No chance of reversing that?

http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=l...&id=4464187

HA! Boy I know 2 noisy kids who are lucky their daddy isn't a mink.

Very cool, Steve. Your mink was in a setting not unlike the one where I worked. In my case, they were in a subdivision with residential lots on every side. I guess they migrated in up the spillway from the creek. Here's a cool story from that lake. I had been working on the lake and happened to notice a family of ducks (a hen and half-grown ducklings) were sitting stock still in the water. "Stock still" is not what ducks normally do...so I stopped to watch. One by one the ducks popped up and flapped away into open water, leaving the other ducks still sitting perfectly still in the weeds. Again, separating that way is very odd for ducks, especially a family of ducks, so I kept watching. The last duck to pop up and fly away was the hen. When she left, a mink's head popped up out of the water in the spot where the hen had been resting. About the same time, a whole family of mink popped out of the bushes on the bank. I guess the mink in the water had been unsuccessfully attacking each duck in succession while the other ducks sat still trying to avoid detection...while the mink family watched from the bushes. As far as diets..mink do take fish, but the food habits studies I've seen show that they capture more crayfish and frogs. They'll take a muskrat and the like. I'm not sure about clams....hmmm.

Yep. I agree it's a mink... ...but you never know what might pop up where. I've seen otter on the Middle Fork down here and there have been some efforts to reintroduce them. Big animals like that can move long distances and if the Dupe has enough habitat (certainly it has enough forage) who's to say an otter might not show up some day. I have a question here. How urbanized was this setting? I was managing a lake that had a successfully reproducing population of mink right in town. I've been curious about how well they do in urban settings ever since.

Thanks Andy. ...or as they would say in Belize "Tanks, mon."

Dude. They'll put your eye out. I don't know if I believe a heron did that. There are plenty of ways for fish to get dinged up. I'm not coming up with something convincing in my own mind yet. Herons tend to take out a chunk...and yes, that would be a HUGE mouthful for a heron to take on. They swallow their prey whole, you know. Otters, other fisherman (my personal guess), fortunes of war....