Tim Smith

Mark, thanks for picking this one up. Glad you were able to make it out to the rally, Craig.

Nice one, Joseph. This is one disadvantage of being an invasive species...you haven't faced the diseases in an area and you're vulnerable to them. Maybe we'll get lucky and this virus will take a big bite out of the asian carp population...but there's a long way to go yet for that to happen.

Looks like a bruise to me, Steve. Fungus would be lighter...columnaris would have attacked the fins and it would be bloody. Pathology isn't my long suite, but I'd tend to agree with you.

...well said.

Great link, Jim... ...and it's not just gobies that rob nests that way. I've seen similar nest predation by sunfish and by minnows.

Thanks Rich and Eric. I've talked to the high end manufacturers and they seem to be shy of shallow water. It seems to be the low end guys who are willing to make the claims. I know there was a hummingbird unit that claimed to work in shallow water...it's just not clear to me how valid those claims are.

One of the groups I work with is an organization in Belize Central America called "Friends of Nature". We are expanding our lagoon monitoring program and are looking for sampling gear. One thing we are hoping to try is a monitoring program for Morelet's and American crocodiles and the West Indian Manatee...and something we hope to try out is a side-scanning fish finder that can work in water 5- 6' deep or less. If anyone has any experience with those devices, I would be interested to know about them (range, quality of read-out etc.). We would be looking for BIG targets (manatee exceed 500 lbs, most of our crocs would be in the 3-6 foot range and often resting on the bottom). There are some very expensive units that do that kind of work, but they don't generally work in shallow water and we can't afford them anyway. We are hoping the low-end units might do a good enough job for monitoring purposes. We are also interested in picking up a good used unit cheap (or even donated...Friends of Nature is not for profit). PMs are welcome, but I thought this might make for an interesting discussion so I posted it here.

Time will sort this all out, but I don't take much from one search coming up empty. Animals are really, realy good at making themselves scarce. Birds are so small and mobile they fall into that category. It's not very easy to get around in a swamp... ...if Bin Laden can evade the US military for 5 years, I suspect an ivory billed woodpecker would have no problem getting away from a few biologists.

I grew up in Louisiana, Mike and the ivory-billed woodpecker was something people were generally aware of and thinking about. I remember from an early age looking for those streaks of white up the neck of the pileated woodpeckers I would see. None of that makes me any kind of expert in any of this, but I do tend to think the bird in the photo is an ivorybill woodpecker. Not only do they have the footage, they also have recordings of the call. One thing that is especially interesting about this sighting to me is that the land where it was seen is or was a private hunting reserve. That's a form of conservation that isn't on most people's radar, but in some places in the world, that's some of the only kind of natural lands still around.

I haven't fished the Des Plaines or spent any time on it, but I have seen a bit of data out of it. The water chemistry there seems to be improving, but still has issues. Here's a map of local water quality on the Des Plaines... http://www.epa.state.il.us/water/water-qua...kes-strms02.pdf ...and some discussion about its current status. http://www.marquette.edu/environment/UAA.html http://dnr.state.il.us/orep/c2000/assessme...reataglance.htm On the other hand, if you throw in the tributaries, there seems to be respectable diversity in the system. The Iowa darter is in the Des Plains...and in this area of the country, that's a pretty rare species. As Mike said, Smallmouth are on the list. But isn't it a slow, low gradient river? I don' think I'd fish there for smallies....carp maybe? Here's list of what the Illinois Natural History Survey has on record. This list is less comprehensive than the list the field offices in the IDNR will keep. Notice that it goes back to 1901. Interesting too that there were trout (Onchorhynchus mykiss) in tributary streams there as late as 1967. http://ellipse.inhs.uiuc.edu:591/INHSCollections/FMPro

Don, I was part of the discussions around setting up the system on Little Kickapoo Creek (which is currently not operating either...you can find it on the USGS map, but there is never any data. I assume it also has run out of money after less than a year of operation). The number I have in my head from those discussions was 12K a year.

Mike, that sounds like a really encouraging meeting. Thats great that you were able to be the ISA presence there.

Yes, Randy. There was a chemical spill there on the Apple that wiped out the smallmouth. It was restocked and it's possible the restocking is somehow connected to the dense smallie population there...although I think that was longer than 5 years ago...I'm not sure about the precise time frame.

Gary, that's true, and it holds true across almost all piscivorous species. Walleye, largemouth, pike, you name it. Juvenile fish that can eat other fish grow much faster than fish eating invertebrates of any type.

Eric, these kinds of discussions are just a sheer pleasure and a big part of what make ISA a unique group in the state. This is a civil, intelligent place to hash out ideas. As for floods and nests... I have seen research that correlates spring flood height to production of black bass juveniles. Interestingly, smallmouth are negatively affected by large floods and largemouth and spotted bass are positively affected by floods. Most of what I know about smallmouth reproduction is heresay rather than published literature, so take it all with a grain of salt. I don't know all the mechanisms that make smallmouth reproduction especially vulnerable to floods. What is normally said is that the fry get flushed downstream. That may be a bit simplistic, but floods probably really are hard on fry. It can't help that smallmouth tend to occur in rivers stretches with fairly high gradients. The males will stay with a nest in bad conditions to a point. Of course, they're fanning the eggs so it would take a lot of silt to bury or ruin a nest and they will rebuild a nest if it's not too far gone. They'll probably guard a nest as long as they can get females to deposit eggs there. Desite their resilience, its not a good thing to prolong their spawning. Not only is it hard on them, but fry born late in the year are more likely to get eaten and will be smaller entering winter. This is an interesting point. Contrary to popular belief, you can have a bass fishery fueled mostly by cannibalism. It's generally not a GOOD fishery, but some systems do work that way. Gary, in this case, it would have to be early spawned smallmouth or last year's juveniles to benefit from eating fry off the nest. The seven inchers wouldn't get much benefit from prey that small. For the most part though, I think its sunfish, minnows and crayfish that consume the fry. Fewer smallies in the Apple might be a good thing overall, though.

I sure agree about being careful about labeling things "good" and "bad", Greg. I'm not going to throw stones at anyone, that's for sure. I do like the kind of thing Jude is proposing though, where there is some kind of ISA accomodation of the spawning period beyond just catch and release. Avoiding bedding fish is a good start. Putting spring trips on larger water isn't a bad idea either.

Your point is well taken that the total effect of losing those fry will vary from system to system. There are clearly a few systems where losing a few smallmouth might even be a good thing due to over-population. But the answer is "yes" there is good information out there about what happens when you fish spawning smallies. A careful study of fishing effects on spawning effort (done by Survey researchers working in Canada) showed that fish that are caught off beds don't defend their young while they are recovering from hooking stress. There were observations of the predators that move in to consume the fry and eggs while the bass are off the nest, observations of the behavior of the males after being caught and observations of total production of live fry at the end of the guarding period. There was also an interesting observation that the more aggressive defenders of the nests (i.e. the better parents) were also the more likely to be caught. I can try to drag that paper out or you can look for the abstract yourself on the Transactions of the American Fisheries Society journal search engine.

We would do well to consider this. Every time we catch a male on a nest, we're probably killing smallmouth fry or eggs. If we want to set a good example...its worth a good hard think. Mid June might be long enough to wait.

....and some yellows! Nice haul!

Sounds awesome, Don.

Darn it, Jonesy. Now there's slobber all over my keyboard.

Morels are some of the best mushrooms going. What latitude are you finding them, Jonesy? I had a patch near Sullivan several years back but I haven't checked it in a long time. Do you think the yellows might still be popping up down there?

I feel your pain, Kevin. It will take some time for all that silt to wash out of there. That was one of the main questions about dam(n) removal when it was first conceived... ...but hey, maybe all that silt will end up in New Orleans and keep them from losing the French Quarter in the next hurricane. HA!