Sticks and Stones May Break your Bones, but EVIL Sticks and Stones will Mess Up your Seine Haul.

Entering the Whitetail Shiner project, I initially imagined easily accessible pools with an abundance of fish just waiting to jump into your seine net to be counted for the greater good of science. Having never used a seine before, I was in for a treat during my first day of fieldwork. While Tayton Alvis and I were able to successfully catch plenty of fish, we ran into some obstacles. The pools we seine at Brush and Cowee Creek, tributaries of the Little Tennessee River, are not as friendly to local seiners as I would have hoped. You see, some evil sticks and stones lurk under the water, hard to see by the naked eye until they have already snagged your seine and have released all the fish that were once captured. A seine net needs to remain on or extremely close to the stream bed to prevent fish from escaping under the lead line, which means large and jagged rocks or branches can easily mess up one's seine haul.

Brush Creek on Lower Needmore Rd. in Bryson City, NC

For example, take Brush Creek on the right. It may look like a convenient pool to seine, but there is an evil log all the way in the back that is lying down in the deep part of the pool, providing a large space for fish to avoid the seine when it comes roaring through the waters. Tayton and I know that the fish are hanging around that area, but we are unable to catch them because of the evil log.

While logs can make great habitats of the pools inaccessible, they can also poke into the seine net, stopping us in our tracks, and allowing all the fish to flee as the net goes limp. These evil sticks lead to us scooping our hauls sometimes sooner than desired, as some fish is better than none.

Cowee Creek on Cowee Creek Rd. in Franklin, NC

Now that you know about evil logs, a great example of evil rocks threatening our seine hauls is located in Cowee Creek. This pool gets pretty deep by the leaning barren tree in the background, deep enough to where one slip-up will have your waders swamped with cold creek water. And the creek water is only getting colder with each passing week. While the evil rocks are easier to navigate the net away from, they are slippery and abundant on the deeper side of the pool. Tayton and I have slipped on these rocks a couple times already, coming close to swamping our waders. The smaller rocks also love to make their way into our seine nets, which are just simply annoying.

You may wonder, why do you dudes not avoid these evil sticks and stones? Well, some of our best hauls have come from areas near these evil sticks and stones. These pools are also in convenient locations, not too difficult to reach, and have proven themselves to have the presence of fish, specifically the whitetail shiner, our target species.

After seining these pools over three weeks, we have begun to familiarize ourselves with the creek bed, knowing where to expect these evil sticks and stones, so our strategies have changed to best adapt to the specific pool we are seining. While evil sticks and stones still creep up on us, we can avoid and properly deal with the seiner's enemy of the creek. Fortunately for us, Tessentee Creek is almost ideal for a seiner and a longitudinal study of the creek means more time spent in favorable conditions.

Sure these evil sticks and stones exist, but it is worth seining these pools regardless of the obstacles as the fish that call these creeks home are beautiful and extremely interesting. There is an entire community swimming around that I have never observed until I picked up the seine.

A low res image of Mr. Zach holding a Gilt Darter (Percina Evides)

~Zachary Laibinis