Brook Stickleback

As I've mentioned in previous posts, I have a 10 gallon aquarium stocked with minnows from the bait shop that I use to feed the sunfish and smallies in my 30 gallon aquarium. The number of minnows has been dwindling down, and yesterday I found a surprise visitor to my tank, a brook stickleback! I've never seen one before, but I'm 99% sure that's what it is. I can clearly see the 5 spines on it's back. Sorry for the crappy photo, but it's the best I could do with such a small fish that insisted on staying at the back of the tank.



I took a short video too. The stickleback has some interesting behavior. He has to furiously move his pectoral pins to swim around, and tends to stay on the bottom like a darter when he's resting. I have no idea how to care for it; I'm really hoping he'll eat goldfish food.

Overdue post

Ice fishing really slowed down since my last post. I think I made it out on Monona twice, but didn't have any luck either time. I was really hoping for the 'late ice crappies' that a lot of people were talking up, but apparently I wasn't out there on the right days. Below is a pic from inside the portable shanty that Jeff is letting me borrow.



I was down in Champaign for one day 2 weeks ago and stopped by that small subidivision pond to do a little bass fishing with Jeff. The fishing wasn't spectacular - we each caught 2, but I was excited to fish open water for a change (the lakes in Madison are still frozen!). After Jeff took off I stumbled upon a channel cat sitting in the shallow water and grabbed him by hand. Does that count as noodling from land? It looked like he was sick and hadn't been eating because he was very thin. I let him go and he swam off, who knows if he'll make it or not.

I really need to get more sun. Dang I'm pale!