Micros at Night

It didn't take me much time seeking new species to realize that I could find a broad variety of fish at night simply by walking the shallows with a bright light, seeing whatever was there to see. And after I started doing that, I discovered that a certain number of species remain willing to eat while being lit up by a bright light. Why? I don't know. But micro fish especially seem to have a pretty relaxed attitude about being spot-lighted. And, honestly, there's no other way to catch them at night. Micros, bottom feeders, and other species that require sight fishing methods to capture at night using artificial flies at night, I will spotlight. For everything else, it feels dirty to me. And doesn't really work either.

But I digress....

I've spent an immense amount of time walking around in the shallows of lakes, ponds, rivers, small streams, and estuaries at night with a light on. And as things have warmed up this spring I've started to do so again. 

Juvenile American eel ((yellow phase) Anguilla rostrata)  hiding in the rocks. 

Blacknose dace, Rhinichthys atratulus

 With a full moon wrecking the night trout fishing last weekend on my part time home water and only one small brown and a jumbo common shiner on the mouse in a few hours, I made the switch over to spotlighting and tanago hook flies.

Large male common shiner, Luxilus cornutus

 Tessellated darters were the most abundant targets. It's funny, they all have different personalities. Some will spook as soon and the lands in front of them. Others with let you touch them with it repeatedly but won't spook or take it. Others will nip it once or twice then run away. A few will keep eating it even if you've hooked them, lifted them out of the water, and then lost them.
Females are the most abundant and also the most dull, so I tried to seek out the more robust and colorful males. I still ended up with more than a dozen females.

Tessellated darter, female. Etheostoma olmstedi

I was also seeing a lot of small white suckers, and I was determined to catch one of them. It didn't surprise me in the slightest that they wouldn't take a fly alone. But I won't lie, I was a little taken aback by how quickly I got one when I tipped the fly with a little bit of worm. I really thought they'd be harder than that. I caught four in total.

White sucker, Catostomus commersonii

Another surprise was that I caught both a bluegill and a green sunfish. I've found sunfish to be a bear to deceive under a spotlight. The greenie made off before a photo op was allowed.

Bluegill, Lepomis macrochirus

 Then I found what I was looking for, a studly male tessellated darter. What a handsome little beast he was!

Tessellated darter, male.

 

Spotlighting at night is liable to produce a pretty large number of new micro species for me this year if I can just get to the places where those new species are. I'm running out of them close to home. 

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