Missouri: Day Three

We decided that this trip was as much about collecting as it was about relaxing...just the kind of decision anyone might make who has been collecting in the middle of rushing water for 6 hours the day before. We slept in until 8...

We were heading down to Neosho today. Neosho is a smaller town south of Joplin in the Southwest corner of the state. Our research told us that the Neosho Pygmy Crawdad and a number of darters could be found in the streams South of town. We were seeking both the Crawdads and the darters but would also be looking for Madtoms and shiners.

Because we had stayed the night in Rolla, Missouri we would have to be on the road for nearly 3 hours to get to the collecting sites. We decided to indulge in fine dining for breadfast and headed to Micky D's...back to the motel to repack the fish and gear...on the road about 10:30 and heading towards Neosho.

The country flattens out as we head to the West and I begin to wonder if we had made a good decision. The cloud cover and the headwinds didn't make me any less nervous. But what the heck, we had had a good day yesterday so I knew I would have enough examples of fish to start my breeding efforts with.

Katy had the brilliant idea to ask the motel in Neosho if we could off load some of our gear for an early check-in. They said that wouldn't be a problem. So when we got to town, we headed straight for the motel and off loaded the fish...to the many stares of the staff and other guests. Oh well, my neighbors think I'm odd, so why not the people in Missouri whom I will probably never see again. We turned the airconditioner on in the motel room being careful not to set it too low...

...and off we were again. More country roads without signs. Katy was having a blast...oK, so maybe she wasn't. But she was getting better at figuring out where the heck we were.

We found a pretty good site fairly easily...a great parking area near the bridge but with barbed wire lining the road. Unfortunately there was no farm house in sight and we hadn't passed one in a bit. Normally we would ask permission to cross the wire. We chanced it a little and donned the waders, rigged the nets, loaded the minnow trap with cat food (new can...the first one was too gross, even for me)...and hopped the fence.

We dropped the Life begins with LIVE FOOD! minnow trap into a small pool and headed a little down stream...first dip: Neosho Pygmy Crawdad. We quickly collected about 3 dozen specimens. They are easy to catch when you try and even easier if you don't try. The bottom was covered with perfect habitat for the critters and they seemed to be everywhere.

Because we were going to be trying to breed the crawdads when we got them back to the fishroom, it was important that we make note of the habitat. We wanted to be able to dupicate the conditions to some degree so that we would starnd a better chance of being successful in our spawning efforts.

The bottom of the riffles that we were catching the crawdads in were covered with rubble. I'd say gravel, but it was chunkier than what most of us would consider to be gravel. The bulk of the material on the top of the subtrate layer seems to be 1/2 - 3/4 inches in diameter and the top of the layers were covered with algae...every so often larger stones were scattered into the mix. The crawdads were burrowed under the larger stones...almost every one of them in fact. There were larger crawdads in the mix also, but it was the Pygmy that we were seeking. The capture technique is nothing too special. We simply put the net downstream from a likely rock (nearly any of the medium and larger stones) and picked it and/or stomped in the gravel a bit and the crawdads would scurry downstream and into the net.

We also found darters in this location. We didn't find nearly as many as we had at Site #5 the day before. We had to work to get any darters at this site. We gathered some 30 examples and decided to move on to a new site so that we could get a bigger sampling of the area.

Here is where a bad plan, execute well can be really quite silly. I thought that because we would be finding so many good sites in a very short period of time, we could keep our waders on to save time...when the temperature of the air is in the 80s and the humidy is also in the 80s...don't make the same mistake. It wouldn't have been so bad but after a quick stop further down the same stream, the next collection was several hours later...I think I lost several pounds from sweating.

The weather played a significant role in the success of the trip. Several weeks prior to leaving for Missouri the news told of severe flooding East of the Maries River system...the Maries was low...and Southeast of Neosho had been scoured by BIG water the week before. We had to turn back from one crossing because the bridge had been washed out...small rocks 3-4 inches in diameter had cascaded down small rivilets in significant quantities...I as glad we had 4x4 access and at the last stop...

there was no algae and the fish were small, nearly all of the them females and/or sub-adult males.

We did find significant crawdads...not the Pymgy, but others. We also found sculpins. We should have found sculpins in our prior collection sites, as all of them are within the range of one or another species, but even at this last site, we netted only 3. The minnow trap was surrounded by large shiner/minnows when we went to retrieve it. None had entered the trap but I could tell by their reflections and coloration that they were Redfin Shiners.

So while we did find fish today, we didn't find too many. We think we can chalk up the "bad luck" to the heavy weather that the area had experienced the previous week.

The only other "bad" thing that we ran into was an occasional idiotic creation by a human...in this case Stephanie...she just couldn't keep her can of spray paint in her purse. I'm sure her parents can be proud of her artwork.

Please don't do this! We still had some daylight left and tried to find one last site, but the Darter Gods were not with us and we didn't find a stream with the right conditions. So we headed back to the motel.

We packed the crawdads up first. We double bagged them and packed them in Styrofoam boxes. We then talked through the next day as it would be our last of the trip. We need to be at KC International by 5:00 in the afternoon, sans rental truck. While I took care of some last minute water changes and sorted some of the catch, we did a short time line study and decided that in order to get everything done in the morning...we would need to get up a little earlier than we had been getting up...it was my job to set the alarm.

I did set the alarm. I did set the time for the alarm function properly. What I didn't do was set the time function properly...oh it was the right time on the clock with the exception of the PM/AM difference...

Give me a break...like you've never done that yourself.

Day Four: The Last Day...How do we get all this home?