Just wanted to send out a reminder that we are still here! Newsletters have been sparse, but this is our busiest time of the year. And we have been busy, both in the hatchery and in the field.

Our boulder darter release into Shoal Cr. (way back in May!) went well. We will be traveling back to Shoal Creek later this summer to see how they're doing. This is a great cooperative effort involving CFI, the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, World Wildlife Fund and International Paper. We're excited about the prospects of the boulder darters doing well there and can't wait to get back and check on them!

Up until lately, we have been very fortunate to have had a pretty dry spring. We don't often have the luxury of being able to work in some of the larger rivers in the spring and early summer. This has allowed us to do quite a bit of snorkeling in the Powell River, searching for yellowfin madtoms, Noturus flavipinnis. We have, as a result, extended their known range upstream by about eight river miles. We have also found several sites within their previously known range that have turned out to have really robust yellowfin populations. Several of these sites have looked good to us in the past, but we have not been able to snorkel them because of high water. We hope to be able to get back in the river soon and continue to look at other upstream sites. We also hope to get back into the Clinch River in Virginia to look for additional populations.

Exciting Spawnings!

Speaking of yellowfin madtoms.....we have had some of our yellowfins that were reared from a nest collected in Copper Creek spawn for us! We were able to hatch some of these, and at the time of this writing, some are still doing well! Inducing these madtoms to spawn for us has been a real problem for years! These are the first ones we have spawned and reared in our hatchery. We have had other species spawn and have been able to successfully rear some of these, but yellowfins have always proven more difficult. We have decided that some madtoms are simply easier than others! We hope to continue to refine our madtom spawning techniques and one day be able to produce any of these with relative consistency

We have had mixed success spawning some of the Percina that we have been working on. .The blotchside logperch spawned several times and produced viable eggs. But, the larvae never survived to the point of even swimming up off the bottom of the hatching container. They never reached the point of feeding. These were very young adults and we have sometimes seen immature fish produce poor quality eggs. We're hopeful that these will again spawn for us next spring and perhaps we can rear some.

We were also finally able to spawn our tangerine darters, Percina aurantiaca! These did produce viable eggs and larvae. We made some interesting observations on the larvae. Check out their feeding behavior. The very youngest larvae appeared to do most of their feeding right along the water's meniscus. We had difficulties with the larvae to start with. But, eventually, we were able to rear some to juveniles. Unfortunately, we were only able to rear 16 to this stage and we have since had some problems with these. Despite our troubles, however, we feel pretty confident that next season we can do better with them. Hopefully, within a year or so, we can have good numbers to consider releasing into the recovering lower Pigeon River!

I'll try not to take so long in getting the next newsletter out! Thanks for your continued interest!

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