Conservation Fisheries, Inc.

Newsletter #25 December 2004

Fall 2004 Update

It's been a busy, difficult and productive Fall all rolled into one for CFI! As usual, there is more field work than time. And the weather has frustrated us to no end! A typical week that we have field work planned goes something like this: The water levels start improving over the weekend from the last storm; Monday, more rain, water rises and muddies; weather is beautiful the rest of the week, but water levels are too high still! The weekend comes and the cycle starts again! Oh well. We still managed to get a lot done this fall. The only work we just simply have not been able to do is the larger river work....primarily lower Clinch and Powell rivers.

But, we have been able to do quite a bit of survey work in the upper Powell and upper Clinch. And that has been very productive! Following up on a sighting of a yellowfin madtom, Noturus flavipinnis, by Mike Pinder in the Clinch river near Cleveland, we began conducting snorkel and dip net surveys in that area of the upper Clinch. We found what appear to be pretty good populations of yellowfins from Cleveland downstream 15 or so river miles. Bad weather kept interfering with our plans to search further upstream. We hope to get that done next season!

Two yellowfin madtoms and one mountain madtom

Yellowfin madtom in Clinch River

This is great news for the yellowfins! They are hanging on in Copper Creek and still have a pretty good population in a stretch of the Powell River, in addition to the Citico and Abrams populations.

Another good find in the Clinch was an ashy darter, Etheostoma cinerium, near St. Paul, VA. Ashy darters were feared extirpated from the Clinch in Virginia. This specimen was seen and collected while snorkeling for madtoms. We will be keeping our eyes out for additional ashy darters during future madtom surveys!

Also of interest for this Fall: We have a contract to work out a spawning protocol for the goldstripe darters, E. parvipinne as a surrogate for the recently described rush darter, E. phytophilum. As we searched the literature and collection records to try to decide where to look for our goldstripe darters, we were discouraged to see that even though they're widespread, very few collections consisted of more than a couple of individuals.

We picked four or five sites that had produced goldstripe darters in the past....including a couple where we had found them while surveying in the Hatchie watershed. We spent a very long day going from one site to the next. We managed to find one goldstripe darter at one of our old sites, but despite hours of collecting, could not come up with any others!

Just as we were giving up and driving back toward home, we passed a ditch beside the road with moving water and plenty of vegetation. Pat suggested we give it a quick try!

This was an unnamed tributary to Piney Creek (a direct trib to the Hatchie) and it turned out to be the honey hole! We collected 10 goldstripe darters there in a relatively short time and headed back to Knoxville!

Goldstripe darter

We will report on how spawning goes with these interesting darters next spring!      Thanks for all of your continued interest in our work!

Happy Holidays from the crew at CFI

J. R. Shute