DATELINE: JUNE 25, 2024 – CENTRAL OKLAHOMA
The following morning, which opened our ninth day on the road, was emotionally complex. I added half a species but had a near-emergency room experience. We started the session at some steaming South Carolina swamp, searching for strange sunfish. I managed to catch an unmistakable, no-doubt-about-it bluespotted, ending four years of internal anguish over whether my original IDs were correct. They were.
But now I was sure, and had an excellent photo upgrade.
All the excitement must have triggered my digestive tract, because I suddenly became aware that the Holiday Inn breakfast was going to make an exit. I trotted into the woods for some privacy, and just as I began to crouch, something caught my eye. It was a copperhead. Beautiful, to be sure, but venomous just the same. It seemed rather nonplussed, but if the takeaway from this trip had been me being bitten on the rear by a poisonous snake, I would never have lived it down.
Or not, but I am certain that no one would have sucked out the venom.
We spent the rest of that day hunting the very back of another swamp. Although there were no new fish to report, Carson was stalked by an alligator.
Things were a bit thin for me for a couple of days, although I did add a rosyface chub somewhere in South Carolina.
The rosyface chub.
The following day, along the North Carolina/Tennessee border, we made a stop I had been looking forward to for the whole trip. Our target was the greenfin darter, a relative rarity that is both attractive and has a reputation for being indifferent to bait.
It was anticlimactic. We all got one in five minutes. Big score.
We wandered back into Tennessee, where we had been the week before. When getting fishing licenses for road trips, I always take the annual option to avoid buying a series of day permits. It ends up cheaper and gives you peace of mind.
As we continued west, we revisited some spots from prior years, and found many of them still blown out, even a month after my visit with Ron and Gerry.
I caught this sauger in a spillway that had been completely flooded in May. It was so flooded you couldn’t tell it was a spillway.
As we struggled to find clear water, we looked for dams and smaller creeks, and not far from there I had failed in May, I pulled up a Caney Fork darter.
Take that, Gerry! (Honestly, Gerry would have gladly let me catch his Caney Fork if he had known I was going to lose this much sleep over it.)
A few hours later, in a creek that was an audible of an audible, we stumbled into more of the barcheek complex, and we all added corrugated darters to our lists.
Oh hell yes.
We spent the afternoon at a familiar location, the place I had caught and badly photographed a headwater darter in May. The guys got one quickly, and Carson’s photos were much better than mine. Chris actually passed up on a good one so Carson could get his first – Chris is a great Dad and always puts his kids first, and I always admire that. Just when I said “Father of the Year,” Carson responded “Semi-finalist.” Wow.
This is about as lit up as they get.
The moon rose just as we finished dinner at the same Subway we ate at the month before. This time, I didn’t leave muddy footprints all over their floor.
Our evening was spent looking for another small sucker in an especially slippery creek.
The place was loaded with these awful water spiders. I haven’t seen anything like this outside of Mirkwood.
We didn’t see any suckers, but I did catch one darter that looked different. I was busy texting Jarrett trying to lock down an ID, but he went Socratic on me and would just give me hints. I guessed and guessed, but I wasn’t doing well. He kept telling me I’d made a “splendid” guess and that it was a “splendid” photo. It still took me 45 minutes to figure out that I’d caught a splendid darter.
Another of the snubnose complex, completing a darter hat trick. This passes for epic in my book.
It was on this evening that something sinister bit Chris on the ankle. We didn’t think much of it at first – we all got zapped by bugs – but while our welts slowly faded after a liberal application of Caladryl and gasoline, this one continually grew and was quickly showing signs of infection.
This was on the following morning. Note the inside of the ankle. Chris’ career as a foot model was in danger.
Even then, he had trouble putting weight on it.
Once we got back toward the west, fishing spots became farther and farther between, and the evening drive to the hotel is always a long one. Standup comedy helped us through a lot of these hauls – Anthony Jessilnik became my new favorite. (“My Father taught himself CPR by throwing me in the pool.”) But sometimes, we are reduced to conversation, and when three men have been in a car together for two weeks, some amusing random stories are likely to come out.
Late one night, somewhere between gas station burritos and a Red Roof Inn, I reminded everyone that they should never pee and sneeze at the same time. This is something all men figure out the hard way. As we chuckled, Chris suddenly blurted out “Never feed a cat ham and chocolate milk.” Carson and I demanded that he unpack that one further, and it turns out that Chris’ college dorm RA had a cat. The cat somehow got out, and the RA was not to be found, so Chris and his buddies figured they would at least feed the poor feline. The refrigerator had sliced ham and chocolate milk. These both seem reasonable to me. It’s dairy. It’s meat. The cat seemed happy with the situation. When the RA got back, they gave him the cat, and all seemed well until the early hours when screaming awoke them all. The meal had not agreed with the cat, and the animal also decided it didn’t agree with the litter box. To quote Chris, “The wall looked like Jackson Pollock painted it with jello pudding.” Calm down – the cat was fine, the RA eventually got over it, and the room stopped smelling once they tore the building down.
The following morning, we had our inevitable brush with the law. As we fished for darters in a secluded stream, a warden drove in and waved us over. You figure most people have never seen microfishing, but as soon as we explained it all to him, he checked out licenses and was on his way.
Officer Fox of Kentucky Fish and Wildlife. Very nice guy – and remember folks, get your licenses early, while you still have cell signal.
The rest of the day was one big photo upgrade. The weather was perfect, and we enjoyed the midwestern scenery as we stopped at half a dozen random streams.
I always yell “Hay!” whenever we pass a field like this. It never gets old.
We stopped at half a dozen random streams, and each one seemed to be stuffed with darters. Although I didn’t end up with anything new, I got some of my better photos.
A nice shot of a rainbow, which was my very first darter species, in 2015 with Martini and Ben.
AFF – Another Darn Fantail, but this is a handsome one.
A far prettier rosyside dace than my 2023 effort.
But the scarlet shiners truly outdid everything.
My first scarlet shiner was substantially duller than this one.
But Carson outdid us all.
And then took a nap.
One Red Roof Inn breakfast later, Carson tracked down a spot that was supposed to have silverjaw minnows. (The closest relative of the longjaw minnow I had caught in Florida.) It was an awkward access – a steep scramble down a rocky bank – which would have been fine except Chris’ foot had gotten positively gross.
Just two days later. I swear it was glowing in the dark.
He had trouble walking on it, but he wanted the species bad and he did the climb without complaint. What a mensch.
The silverjaws were mixed in with some assorted other fish, and the first of these I got, a creek chub, was my 1000th fish caught in 2024. (This is not the earliest in the year I had reached 1000 – that would have been May, back in 2006, the year I caught over 3000 fish, most of them sardines.)
Carson has sharp eyes, and after he caught his silverjaw, he helped me and Chris spot ours without making too much fun of us.
Number 20 of the trip and 2318 lifetime.
The next morning found us working our way through Missouri, visiting a few familiar spots I had fished over the years. While I didn’t get anything new there, the guys kept chipping away with a couple here and there, and Chris’ ankle officially became a full-on medical experiment. It started to smell. He couldn’t put weight on it without yelping in pain, and this is a tough guy we’re talking about.
We could hear it throbbing.
I took a look at it, and wished I hadn’t. Chris had grown a nipple on his ankle. Indeed, this blog was nearly called “The Ankle Nipple,” except for the obvious problems of getting a title like “The Ankle Nipple” past Marta. Oh wait – this blog IS called “The Ankle Nipple,” and now I’ve managed to say “nipple” five times in one paragraph. The twelve year-old in me is strong and makes many of my creative decisions.
Tell me I’m wrong. And yes, it did eventually heal.
After a comical hour or two trying to reach a health insurance person who could give accurate advice, we stopped at an urgent care so that some nurse practitioner could poke at it and say “Eeeeeew.” At least he got started on antibiotics, which provided hope that he could save the foot, but didn’t make him feel any better right away.
We caught a lot of fish the next two days, but nothing of note until the afternoon of the 24th, when we walked (or limped) down to a creek in Arkansas. We were looking for a couple of darter species, but I only saw some suspiciously slender shiners. Chris, between gasps of pain, suggested they might be silversides, and it didn’t take me long to figure this meant they were likely brook silversides, a species I had thought I caught for years but hadn’t.
They bit enthusiastically, and the day was worthwhile.
The final full day of the trip for me was a long haul through Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. Somewhere in the middle of the day, as I was musing that Oklahoma is awesome because it is the birthplace of Chuck Norris AND Brad Pitt, we stopped in Oklahoma to look for a darter species that had been recently split from the extensive orangebelly family – the blue river darter.
This was species 22 of the trip, and 2320 lifetime.
The blue river darter was also my 88th lifetime darter, which, although it isn’t a Ron and Jarrett level, is reasonably respectable considering I was under 30 in 2021. I still want to reach 100, and now that doesn’t seem quite so ridiculous.
We ended the evening in Amarillo, Texas, with an outstanding meal at Panda Express, which, for the avoidance of doubt, does not serve Panda and is not all that fast. With 14 hours remaining to Phoenix, and scant targets along the way, I decided to fly from Amarillo early the next morning and get home. I’m hoping that Chris let Carson sit in the front seat on the way to Phoenix, and I smiled to myself as I remembered that when we hopefully do the same trip in 2025, The Mucus will still be in Ecuador. That should give me plenty of time to start missing him, and give Chris’ foot plenty of time to heal.
Steve
Postscript – Chris’ foot modeling career update. (As of press time, almost a year later, he’s got a nasty scar, but let’s face it, his feet were a niche market in the first place.)
Chris’ foot, Puerto Penasco, April 2021. This is why you try on the Crocs before you buy them.
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