Warmouth, blackside darter, other micros

Today I spent a few hours at the same spot featured at the end of my May 26th post, a tributary of the Fox River near the IL / WI border. The water was higher than usual, which turned out to be great for fishing. I'll keep the report short this time and focus on the pictures.

Blackside Darter (Percina maculata) - new hook & line species #110


Warmouth (Lepomis gulosus) - new hook & line species #111


Northern Sunfish (Lepomis peltastes)


Pumpkinseed (Lepomis gibbosus) - juvenile, I almost thought redear sunfish for a second


Spotfin Shiner (Cyprinella spiloptera) - spawning male


Starhead Topminnow (Fundulus dispar) - male


Other fish I saw included lake chubsucker (future lifer), longnose gar (future lifer), northern pike, grass pickerel, largemouth bass, bluegill, green sunfish, black crappie, yellow perch, northern logperch, rainbow darter, and common shiner. Later I tried Lake Michigan for a few oddball species, but only came up with the ever present round goby.

Round Goby (Neogobius melanostomus)

Northern redbelly dace

With only a few more weeks left in Wisconsin, I'm going to try to track down a few of the northern species that won't be available in Illinois.  They include northern redbelly dace, pearl dace, finescale dace, longnose dace, redside dace, central mudminnow, alewife, and several others.  Of course I won't find all of them, but it would be nice to check a few off the list.  First up is northen redbelly dace, which I found in a tea-stained stream coming out of Goose Lake south of I-94 by Lake Mills.

Northern Redbelly Dace (Chrosomus eos) - new hook & line species #109

Shovelnose sturgeon

Last weekend I went on a canoe trip on the Wisconsin River with some non-fishing friends. We launched below Sauk City, camped one night on an island, and arrived in Lone Rock the next day. I had no particular ambitions for fishing, but I always try to take advantage of opportunities, so I brought two rods to set up in rod holders on the beach. Each was rigged with a three-way swivel, 4 oz pyramid sinker, and a small octopus circle hook. This is my favorite large river rig when I do not want the rig to bounce along the bottom. Half of a nightcrawler was my bait. The bite was slow and steady, and fortunately I had plenty of time to sit and wait. Bells on the ends of the rods would let me know if anything exciting happened. The first three fish were shorthead redhorse, the largest being 17 inches. The next fish on the line fought differently; when it was still 30 yards out it jumped in the air, shaking its head vigorously as it splashed back into the water. Definitely not a redhorse. I must have had a pretty big smile on my face as I got the fish close enough to shore to see what it was. Shovelnose sturgeon! I knew one of these ancient fish would be at the end of my line eventually, and fortunately that night was my lucky night.

Shovelnose Sturgeon (Scaphirhynchus platorynchus) - new hook & line species #108




As the sun set, the bells rang a few more times. I caught two more shorthead redhorse and three channel catfish. The redhorse had brilliantly red tails and fins.  I think the group enjoyed seeing some new species of fish.

Johnny darter

Yesterday I made a quick visit to Otter Creek northwest of Prairie du Sac, WI. The creek has several species that I'd like to track down. Unfortunately, the downstream stretch of the creek was too muddy to fish. I continued upstream into the hills of the Baxter's Hollow State Natural Area. Here the creek was clear and cold, flowing over large rocks. The only fish I found here were creek chubs. I was hoping to encounter longnose dace, but if they were present the creek chubs didn't give them a chance to bite. I headed back to the bottom of the hills and found a bridge where the water was still clear but flowing over a sand bottom. I expected Johnny darters in this habitat, and sure enough I spotted a few small ones sitting out in the open sitting on the sand. These juveniles were too small for my micro hooks, so I continued looking around, finally finding a large adult hiding among submerged wood. He took the bait immediately, becoming my #107 lifer!

Johnny Darter (Etheostoma nigrum) - new hook & line species #107


I believe this individual was a male based on the dark pelvic fin, dark nose, and faint vertical bars. A few minutes later I caught an even darker individual, definitely a male.



On my drive home I noticed one of the reasons the downstream stretch of Otter Creek is muddy. The creek runs though several dairy farms after the bridge where I caught the darters. Dozens of cows were standing in the creek, one of which was doing her business in the water as I drove past. I'm sure the cows enjoy the creek, but it's unfortunate for the fish...

First attempt at smoked salmon

Last week a colleague defended his PhD, and to celebrate I hosted a party for him featuring my first attempt at smoked salmon.  I went with the first recipe I found online, which in this case happened to be this site:

http://fishcooking.about.com/od/smokebrine/ss/smokingfish.htm

I followed the recipe for the brine with the exception of fennel, which I didn't have.  I prepared the brine and poured it into a large plastic bag with the gutted salmon.  I let them soak for two days.

The morning of the party, I took the salmon out of the fridge and laid them out on racks in the basement with a box fan blowing cool air over them.  This dried the fish and helped a pellicle form on the outside of the fish.  The fish dried for about five hours.

Four hours before the party I started a fire in the smoker box on the side of the grill.  I used hardwood charcoal to start the fire and then added mesquite smoking chips.  Unfortunately, I think I added too much fuel, because even with the air vents shut completely I could not get the temperature to drop below 180 F.  The target temperature was 140 F.  After three hours the meat was flaking easily.  Next time I will make a better effort to keep the temperatures low so that it can smoke for a longer time.

Once the fish were cooked, I put them on baking sheets and let them cool in the fridge.  This step helped the meat firm up so that it had the desired smoked fish texture.

And here's the finished product!  The smoked salmon tasted great.  It is certainly the best method of preparing salmon that I have tried so far.  I think next time I will try cutting the fish into sections so the meat can more easily absorb the brine as well as the smoke flavor.  Overall, this was a tremendous success though.  The salmon was a big hit at the party, and I have plenty of leftovers in the fridge and freezer to enjoy until the next time I visit Terry in Milwaukee.

Lake Michigan salmon, wild goldfish, and starhead topminnow

Saturday and Sunday mornings I joined Terry for some salmon fishing on Lake Michigan. We started early, getting up at 4:15 and launching the boat from Milwaukee Harbor by 5:00. One of Terry's work friends joined us as well. We put lines in at 45 feet of water, got our first fish at 60 feet of water, and then got the rest came between 90 to 115. We kept the gear in the upper 30 feet of water to target Coho salmon. Coho is what we caught, with our total catch being 15 Coho and 1 steelhead (rainbow trout). The last 2 Coho were a double, so we had to let the second one go without netting it. The limit of salmon and trout combined is 5 fish per person.

14 Coho Salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch), 1 "Steelhead" Rainbow Trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss)

Sunday morning was similar. We started out in deeper water. The bite started slow, but once it picked up we caught our limit pretty quickly. This time the total was 14 Coho and 1 chinook salmon. The chinook tend to be deeper and are caught in deeper water, but this one was the smallest fish of the day and was caught alongside the Coho.

14 Coho Salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch), 1 Chinook Salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha)


Saturday afternoon I wanted to check out some river spots north of Milwaukee. The water was high and visibility was poor though, so nothing came of it. However, we found some nice spots to try at a later date when the water is more cooperative. After checking out the last spot, I realized we were near the pond by Germantown full of wild goldfish. It's always entertaining to get Terry to catch a new species, so we headed over to the pond and broke out the micro gear. After catching several dozen green sunfish, we each caught our goldfish.

Goldfish (Carassius auratus)




On my drive home on Sunday, I stopped by a tributary of the Fox River near the IL / WI border to fish for micros. My first fish turned out to be a new lifer, a starhead topminnow!

Starhead Topminnow (Fundulus dispar) - new hook & line species #106


I also wanted to get some good pictures of logperch from Wisconsin to compare to the ones from southern Illinois. In particular, I wanted to compare the nape of their necks to see the difference between a scaled and unscaled nape, which is one of the ID characteristics between the species or subspecies of logperch (the definitions are a mess right now).

Northern Logperch (Percina caprodes semifasciata)


Unscaled nape? Looks either partially scaled or unscaled to me.



Saw lots of pike and pickerel in the river. I was torn between fishing for micros and switching to lures to fish for them.

Northern Pike (Esox lucius)


The micros that stood out in particular were the colored up common shiners. I've only seen them without their spawning colors, so this was a real treat. I was surprised how different they look from spawning striped shiners.

Common Shiner (Luxilus cornutus )


Here's a complete list of the fish I saw: (1) brook silverside, (2) something from the sucker family, lake chubsucker perhaps, (3) stoneroller sp., (4) common carp, (5) common shiner, (6) bluntnose minnow, (7) starhead topminnow, (8) blackstripe topminnow, (9) grass pickerel, (10) northern pike, (11) longnose gar, (12) rock bass, (13) green sunfish, (14) bluegill, (15) northern sunfish, (16) smallmouth bass, (17) largemouth bass, (18) black crappie, (19) rainbow darter, (20) fantail darter, (21) blackside darter, (22) yellow perch.  Pretty good diversity I'd say!

Return to southern Illinois: toothy gar, massive carp, and awesome micros

Last weekend I met up with some species fishing fanatics for a whirlwind tour of Illinois. Miciah and Bryce run the websites microfishing.com and speciesfishing.com, and Ken has the fishing blog muskiebaitadventures.blogspot.com. Keep an eye out for reports on their respective sites. Ken and I started in Chicago, driving south to the Kankakee River (Illinois River drainage) and tributaries of the Vermilion River (Wabash River drainage). We caught a lot of nice micros, racking up quite a new lifer count for Ken. The next day we drove down to Carlyle to fish below the dam with Miciah and Bryce. The water was high, but we were able to continue the species count by catching smaller fish near shore among the rocks. After Carlyle we drove further south to Rend Lake to fish below its dam. The gar there were spectacular. Finally, we drove back to some of the spots I fished earlier in the spring, a nice clear stream full of micros and Horseshoe Lake in Alexander County. With the water warmed up, the spillway was full of hungry fish. Finally, on the drive back to Chicago Ken and I hit up a few spots to take notes for future trips.

Carmine Shiner (Notropis percobromus)


Rainbow Darter (Etheostoma caeruleum)

Central Greenside Darter (Etheostoma blennioides pholidotum)


Stonecat (Noturus flavus) - netted, not hook & line


Bluegill (Lepomis macrochirus) - two hooks means you can catch two fish at once!


Shortnose Gar (Lepisosteus platostomus)


Shortnose Gar (Lepisosteus platostomus) - new personal best 33.5 inches


Orangethroat Darter (Etheostoma spectabile)

Ozark Logperch (Percina fulvitaenia) - new hook & line species #102




Bleeding Shiner (Luxilus zonatus) - the Fishes of Illinois does not have record of this species!




Bluntnose Minnow (Pimephales notatus)


Striped Fantail Darter (Etheostoma flabellare lineolatum) - new hook & line species #103




Slender Madtom (Noturus exilis) - new hook & line species #104




Pirate Perch (Aphredoderus sayanus) - netted, not hook & line


Weirdo micro fishermen looking for orangespotted sunfish and western mosquitofish


Shortnose Gar (Lepisosteus platostomus) - caught with the famous Lambo lure




Spotted Gar (Lepisosteus oculatus)




Bowfin (Amia calva) - Miciah and I caught these back to back


Bighead Carp (Hypophthalmichthys nobilis) - new hook & line species #105