So Sigi calls me the other morning ... Jenny, can you please do some thing on the darter hunt? Someone backed out of doing an article and I have space to fill. Pleeeease help your new Editor. Oh geez Sigi, I've got a kid graduating High School in two weeks. You could not have picked a worse time... reluctantly I agree to fill some blank space but this is gonna be SHORT.

My first darter hunt was in 1992 or '93. I accompanied Anchor Sarslow, Doris Haugsby and the then young man, Chris Kaldor to the Cannon River in Welch, Minnesota. Doris had secured the necessary permit. So with borrowed waders in tote, we were off.Jenny Kruckenberg Welch is a quaint, tiny town that was featured in a teen movie released a couple years ago called "Here on Earth". It also has the ski area Welch Village nearby and in the warm months, the Cannon Valley Trail, a bicyclists' hot spot.

You cannot miss the river. It rushes close to the tiny town and every year I visit, it changes. For that is the nature of a river. Some years there are great clumps of tree limbs. The next year silt has built up around the tangled branches and the next year, there's a new channel created around what has become a weed covered dune.

Mostly at this location, the substrate is rocky. The pH is high and the water temperature is a cool 50 degrees. The water flows along quickly. When we have kids with us, we try to keep them upstream of the seine net so that if they loose their footing, we'll catch them in the net. (And yes, this applies to adults too sometimes!) Some years when the water is high coupled with the strong current, it's impossible to collect from this location. Most years are good though. This year was perfect.

What do we find? Many Etheostoma zonale (green banded darters), Etheostoma nigrum (Johnny darters), Percina phoxocephala (slenderhead darters) and some Percina caprodes (log perchóa large darter). We also find many longnose dace, emerald shiner minnows and occasionally, stone cat mad torn catfish, red horse, Northern hognose suckers and some large carp. One never knows what will be in the net. There are also lots of interesting inverts; stone flies, may flies, crane fly larvae etc. All of these fish and creepy things thrive on the clean water of the Cannon River. They are starting to spawn and some have spectacular colors. Especially the green-banded darters. They have bands of green that rival the color of your lawn! They look like salt water fish.

We sample and if we have something we might want to keep or just look at, it goes into a flow-through minnow bucket attached to someone's waist. We need at least three to four people, two to hold the net and one or two, who "swish" upstream. There's no need to go more than four to six feet in front of the net with each pass, but swishers should try not to walk through the next area. After the net's contents are examined, the best technique is to separate to each side (in front of the net holders), walk upstream, let the net holders get planted, then walk in towards the center and back towards the net, swishing all the while.

Later, we examine what's in our flow-through bucket with the aide of any small viewing tank. Plastic Kritter-Keepers work well. We take some pictures and split up any fish people want to take home and enjoy. I handle the paperwork. Every year I need to make a report to the DNR Fisheries Manager outlining where we've gone and what we've taken. I say, "it's a privilege to be granted a permit to catch/keep darters and we must not abuse its use" and I firmly believe this is true.

Some people want to do this because it's a unique experience to collect your own fish. Some people just want to get out and enjoy the fresh Spring air. Whatever the reasons, we all seem to really enjoy it and for me, that's the main reason I'll continue to organize "the hunt" year after year.