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It’s all about the Fall with Fish Jim

By Jeff Vander Berg

May/June 2005 Issue# 32

Let’s first explain that this article is about the “F” words! Yes, there are more than one! The “F” words we will read about here though are “Friends” “Fun”, “Fall” and “Fish”. This article is actually based on two local fish collecting days with Jim Graham, Scott Tetzlaff, Ken Hoekstra, Damon (my son) and myself.

Let’s start off by saying I have always been interested in keeping native fish. I have been a fisherman my whole life although I certainly do not find much time for it these days. I can remember catching minnows as a kid and bringing them home to put in an aquarium in the garage. Of course, they didn’t last long. I have always thought that our native bluegill, sunfish and crappie varieties are among some of the most beautiful fish I have laid eyes on. It really doesn’t matter if they were in an aquarium or in the frying pan, they are still beautiful! I have seen pictures of the rainbow darters (Etheostoma caeruleum) and have since wanted some for an aquarium. Probably for 15 years now I have been pining for these beautiful little creatures!

Over the past several years I have collected with Tim Boelema and Finn Nielsen, once with the both of them in Florida where we caught some killies and livebearers. And once with Finn here in Michigan where we caught a dozen varieties, mostly minnows and shiners but also some sculpins and a few darters. All of my “two” collecting experiences have involved dip nets only, so I was going to learn a lot with Fish Jim.

Day 1
Recently, I had talked to Jim about going to his place to take some pictures of his native fish for our GVAC website. I really thought it would be a nice addition of pictures as we really do not see much in the way of people keeping natives despite them being all around us! I know the Europeans love our natives, so I guess it all comes down to whether the fish we keep are exotic or not! Jim has been a North American Native Fish Association (NANFA.org) member since 1999. Upon seeing his 300 gallon aquarium in his living room full of native darters, minnows and shiners, I knew I was going to be hooked. I snapped off a ton of shots of fish in this tank, but had issues with reflections from both my bald head and everything else around me. I did not get a lot of good pictures out of the tank although I saw a great picture that Charlie Grimes had taken. It is quite spectacular! I could write a whole article on his fishrooms and fish related toys, so I do not want to get into that too much in this article but will save that for another time. We did take a bunch of shots in one of his fishrooms and

you can see the evidence of some of his fish (remember we took basically natives although that is about half of what he keeps in his 100+ tanks) on the GVAC website (photo_graham.htm). Upon completing the task at hand we decided to go collecting for a little while as he informed me that the Rainbow Darters were in breeding color at that moment.

We loaded up and took off to go to McDonald’s Playland for lunch so Damon and Jim could wear some of their anxiety off. On the way over there my son was having an issue with Jim’s name as we know about 10 “Jim’s”, so we had to change it to “Fish Jim” just like Tim Boelema is “Fish Tim”. After a short while we headed to his “secret” spot on the Thornapple River to catch some fish. (There is a possibility for a joint club collecting trip in this spot next spring, providing you have a Michigan fishing license at that time).

If you have ever watched a movie and saw one of those “teched out” FBI vans, just imagine Jim’s as a “teched out” NANFA van. Books and field guides, three sets of waders, every type of net you could think of, coolers and more coolers that he had airpumps rigged through so you could run air, in the coolers, in the van! Jim and I put on the waders, grabbed a bucket, seine and Damon and headed down to the water. Although the water was shallow, yet rapid, I was strangely reluctant to jump right in. I have had some extremely close calls with those old time rubber waders when I was a teenager, I tried to drown twice. Once in the Grand River, I still envision that one a lot! And once fishing in the White River. I have not been in waders since the second time almost 20 years ago. Of course, Fish Jim helped the situation by telling me he hoped that I would get wet so he could laugh, and kept telling me how Charlie Grimes had “pushed” him into the water a few weeks earlier! In a moments time, I thought of me being such a rugged outdoorsman, mountain bike racer, adventure racer, mountain hiker/climber, and whitewater rafter, and I was nervous somehow of two feet of water. What propelled me in the water was the chance to catch the elusive, to me, darter and my soon to be four year old son begging to get into the water, himself. I couldn’t be shown up by him, after-all my wife competes in all the same things I do, so I would never live it down if he beat me into the water!

Upon traversing the first 6 feet from the river’s bank the water went from 2 feet to about 6 inches that was screaming over a gravel bed. This is where the Rainbow Darter spawns in the gravel of a fast moving river or stream. Jim positioned himself downstream and told me to go 20 feet upstream and do the “darter dance” towards the seine. As I did this I could see few fish swimming toward the seine. When I reached the net, I grabbed one end to help Jim hoist the whole thing out of the water. To my pleasure there were 40 fish in the net ranging from 1 inch to roughly 3.5 inches. I was amazed. I must say that it will be one of the moments I remember forever in my fish “career”. The colors on the males were even more intense than the books or my imagination would allow. Reds, greens, blues and yellows! I quickly grabbed a couple select fish and placed them in the bucket (picture below). We did another darter dance and scooped another 40 or so. I picked a few more and we left this collecting spot.

We traveled a short distance to a “secret” local lake in search of the Least Darter (Etheostoma microperca). Now this darter is much different from the Rainbow Darter, it prefers to spawn on plants in lakes and ponds. This darter as the name would imply stays small per the books, 1.75 inches is the max. The weather was cool with a stiff breeze blowing across the water from the west onto us. None of the vegetation was breaking the surface yet as it was still late April. But both Jim and I jumped into the water this time with dip nets, scraping across the bottom and around vegetation. This took many more tries to get any decent results! I caught one Fundulus sp (killifish) in the first ten or so tries. After a half hour of manning the nets and Damon throwing stones from shore into the water around me. We packed up with 6 one inch Least Darters and two of the Fundulus sp. We were done for the day.

Upon getting my fish home, I noticed that I had one extra darter of some kind that I later identified as Blackside Darter (Percina maculata) also caught in the river.

Day 2
This day was in mid May. I was supposed to be to Fish Jim’s at 9am but fell behind the target time due to construction traffic in the Grand Rapids metro area. I was supposed to help move a different 300 gallon tank from his fishroom into his van so he could deliver the following day to Charlie, in Indy. As luck would have it Scott, Ken and Jim had it ¾ of the way into the van by the time I got there, so my help lasted for a quick and fairly easy 3 minutes. My portion was key though, as I had to balance on two tubs full of water and lift my end of the tank so they could pull the wood ramp out from under it! At least I tell myself it was key! After a few moments of talking and resting we decided to go collecting again.

The four of us headed to the Rainbow Darter spot to try to find some more of the Blackside Darter. Now this trip was not what I would call “full contact” fishing but the verbal jabs ran much more freely than Day 1. The thing everyone was hoping for is that someone would go for a swim in the cold water. Ken put on his new hip waders while the rest of us put on a full set. We spent much more time going through the river on Day 2. We probably took 15 shots with the seine. Ken and Scott used the net while Jim and I did the “darter dance”. I made sure I stayed far enough away from Jim so he wouldn’t try to hold my hand or push me into the water. But not too close to my son who was on the bank throwing rocks downstream. We caught several hundred Rainbows, which we kept a few pairs for Scott. We did end up finding me some Blackside after trying some slightly slower current waters. We also caught some sort of really nice large minnows that we have yet to identify although I suspect they are Rosyface shiners, Notropis rubellus. Scott ended up with these and I am sure they will make a great addition to his collection.

Next we went to a small creek that emptied further downstream into the Thornapple. I suspect that this was the place that Jim had set up to ambush Ken and I. Scott conveniently went to a nearby gas station and never got into the water, he had been to this spot before. Damon said “there are no fish in that river”. The creek was strewn with all kinds of manmade obstacles, mostly concrete blocks. Jim had Ken and I just walk the seine from one side to the other and we kept getting hung up on debris. We tried several times before we decided to go as we caught not one fish. As we were walking back up stream toward the others talking to each other, Ken caught his foot for the first time in the water on something (he darn near fell earlier on a vine going down to the creek). He happened to be looking at me and I could see his eyes grow as large as his glasses as his feet started to look animated like a cartoon character. He basically ran 10-15 feet upstream trying to catch his balance. Not only would he never live it down if he made the splash, but with the hip waders and the very cold water would have been a shock to the system! There was a lot of incentive not to take a dip at this time! For a retired guy he was able to stop like a sure footed wide-receiver catching a ball in bounds in the NFL, much to the rest of our dismay. The fall would have been much more dramatic and funny, at least to the rest of us! Close call, but still no fall!

We then went to McDonalds Playland again for lunch, to quiet down both Damon and Jim. Jim and I both wore our waders in and got many strange looks. A little side note to myself is that neoprene gets hot when it is not wet, so next time I will be losing the waders before staying out of the water for any amount of time. We also joked about Ken wearing his beekeepers gear into the restaurant so Jim and I would look “normal” comparatively speaking of course!.

The next stop was a lake located near Yankee Springs. This lake I had seen many times as my wife and I train for our sports nearby. All four of us again jumped into the water. Even Damon, to my dismay, got into the water here! We caught a bunch of silver minnows that we tossed back and lots of small bluegill/sunfish that were thrown back as mandated by law. At this point we decided to call it quits for the day and made some loose plans to chase down some more Fundulus species when the water warms up a bit.

Jim wanted to show me his 300 gallon show tank upon return to his home. This is the aquarium where I took many pictures before. Some of the fish were in breeding color. I tell you that I am now hooked on these native fish! Many of them will rival any cichlid, livebearer or characin in color! My favorites are from the genera Notropis and Pteronotropis, which Jim has plenty of representatives from in his fishroom.

In conclusion, there are many great fish that live all around us that would be great for the aquarium. Collecting, while mainly about the fish, has many other good “F” words that revolve around it. Fun, Friends and Family all can revolve around collecting. And let’s not forget about the elusive “Fall” for that one will stay with you forever! The End

Rosyface shiner - looks a lot better without same color background!