See:
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/unclescott@prodigy.net/album?.dir=/8ba5re2&.src=ph&.tok=phiB_q FB1puxY_eX

http://nativefish.us/forum/viewtopic.php?t=436

A number of those took a spill in the very bolder strewn, fast flowing creek (sure looks like a small river to me). I usually am one of the serious "pratfallers" but avoided being swept off of my feet by slowly sideling across the current facing the current. Discovered that stepping sideways, facing the current, at much the same angle one would guard an opposing basketball player, worked. Still the effort was considerable and all of us were quite tired after a couple of hours.

The banks descended to a couple of feet quickly. That made wading in boots in shallows (what shallows?) hard for young people. We watched them very carefully. If some of the younger ones lost their footing, we wanted to be there very quickly reaching for them with a dip net.

It is a tough call, buying waders for someone who will outgrow them in a year or so. Loosely fitting waders are dangerous and shouldn't be worn, for fear of them filling with water and drowning someone.

I have no idea what the speed of the water was. It seemed about the fastest that I would dare go into. If it was 10 mph in open water, it felt 15 or 20 mph swirling around and squeezing through large rocks. Seining among rocks like that is tough. Dipnetting isn't a whole lot easier. The best dipnetters put their net down stream, stepped upstream, shuffled around the rock and lifted the net quickly. We had some luck when we could find a weedy overhang on the bank. All over the world small and not so small fish will hide in such places. A sunfish, rock bass and minnows proved that.

Fish that had become pretty blah looking during the summer are regaining their winter and spring spawning colors. Take a look at that dominant rainbow darter in the native fish forum shots.

A number of fishes were sent off to tanks in schools. A few prolly did go to someone's aquarium. Most were released.

There was also a covered bridge festival going on. Several folks dropped by and were amazed by the variety of fish in the display tank. Color images of them in the spring, from a couple of reference books, impressed them even more.

It was a long drive. But the fall colors and the just breath-taking beauty of the river made it worth while. Caught up with my favorite girl at a fancy dinner that evening and we visited some friends later. Getting a good night's sleep was not a problem late Saturday.

It would be neat to put together a program or programs on this stuff and offer them to sportsman's and fishing clubs. They might be popular in the off-season meetings. My thought on that is to show them what else is in their favorite streams, the beauty of these other fishes, the importance of clean water (which they would agree with anyway) and the importance of a diversity of species and habitat.

The group at Sugar Creek collected several species of darter and some very nice individuals. I brought none home, having some already from that conference in Missouri. It is easy to let one's eyes become bigger than one's aquarium. Darters beg so for food, that they make guppies look like slackers. If squirrels were fish, I think they would be darters.