Drew Aronson
Texas Trip
Lauren Dennhardt and Casey Williams
5/8/2017
Fish Seining
Anytime we got to seine for fish was my favorite time. When we got down there I was surprised to see what they call creeks. Their creeks are like our rivers up here. The first day I got to seine on this trip was the 24th of April. We started our day at Turkey Creek where the stream was very wide. It was a nice sandy beach which had evidence of heavy human use with cans and other garbage everywhere. This site was a little difficult to seine due it being so wide and the river bottom being very sandy. The sand would make it hard to move quickly to capture the fish that present. This location we caught a decent amount of species. We caught a few different types of shiners like, the Sabine, blackspot, ghost, and silverband shiners. We also caught a few top minnows which were visible from land due to them being at the top of the water. We also found one Threadfin shad.
The rest of our locations in the bid thicket would be very different ranging from small winding streams to almost stagnant streams. When we got into this environment some of the species started to change we still saw those shiners from before but a few new ones were present. We started to see fish like the black spotted topminnow, and Western mosquitofish. In water with higher current and riffles we started to see darters like the scaly sand darter, the western sand darter, the mud darter, slough darter, swamp darter, Harelquin Darter and the cypress darter. We even caught a few larger species like the yellow bullhead, assorted sunfish and a spotted gar I personally helped catch. When we pulled the spotted gar up it was a real surprise. It was in shallow water and we caught it when we were going slow and short hall. We caught it in a small winding stream that had good flow.
Seining in the ocean was very different. When we seined in the estuaries many different species showed up including other types of creatures. We used every size net we had in the ocean. We caught a variety of sizes as well. With each hall brought something a little bit different. In the weeds we caught small drums, tongue fish, a red drum, pipe fish which are related to sea horses, mullet, jack, and a few crabs. Every time we picked up our nets we would have gobs of shrimp which we brought back for bait.
When we were right on the beach it was much harder to seine here. WE used a 20-foot bag seine to capture the fish. First to get out there we half way roll up the net to get passed the waves. After we got to about waist deep we let out all the net and began pulling the seine in. It was a hard task to get the net in. It took two people on either side to move it quick enough. We would start parallel with the shore and then make a gradual turn towards the shore. As we went into shore the rip tides would pull us out. When it did this we would be forced to crawl for movement but as a wave would crash in it would push us in. The fish we mostly caught were a species of Florida jack with a very thin compressed body. The other fish we caught were mullet which jump out of the water sometimes.
This trip broadened my horizons drastically. This experience will last me a life time. I hope in the future this knowledge will help me. It showed me all the different diversity that is present in the water systems of the south.