Looking for native shiners

[rsmcgee]

Hello all, I have been developing a Missouri native garden at my home, including a relatively small stream and pond that I have built and established with plant life over the past year. The pond doesn’t have any fish yet, and I am looking to get started by introducing some members of a small Missouri species in the coming weeks. I am currently interested in getting red shiners / bleeding shiners / carmine shiners / or similar. These fish are meant to be ornamental residents in their own right, rather than stocked as forage fish for other species (large fish are unlikely to be introduced). It seems near impossible to acquire native species like these via retail, so I am considering taking a trip out to do some microfishing in hopes of collecting some individuals of this kind of shiner. I am not really a fisherman myself, and I don’t have equipment at the moment, so I am curious a) if it is possible to catch shiners by wading/floating with a hand net with suitable waters and patience, and b) what would be a recommended location/access point for doing so? Big Piney River seems to be one candidate from what I’ve found online, but I’m open to any reasonably accessible spot. (I live near St. Louis, but I am willing to drive throughout the state) Any advice you can offer is much appreciated!

[jdmidwest]

Minnow traps and seines work good.  I used to hit small creeks near home with a 4' seine to get minnows to feed a bass I kept in a 30 gallon aquarium. Takes several to keep a 6" bass fed.

Just look for any clear creek in your area and you should find some.

[bfishn]

The shiner varieties you mentioned all spawn in gravel bottom shallow/fast stream conditions, so I'm unsure if you'll ever get a satisfactory self-sustaining population in a pond unless the stream is spring-fed and stable year-round. The red shiners can be pretty year round, but the others only color up for the spawn.

With a hand net or hook you'll be forever catching enough to establish a breeding population. Like JD said, a seine could do it. I've caught lots of various local shiner varieties with a small cast net, but I did it during the spawn in Feb-April when large numbers were gathered below an upstream migration obstacle like a pool below a culvert at a low water crossing.

The easy route would be to buy a few pounds of rosy reds (fathead minnows) from a live bait dealer. If you can maintain a plankton bloom in your pond and have suitable substrate for them to spawn on you could do really well with them.

[sitting fishing]

11 hours ago, rsmcgee said:

Hello all, I have been developing a Missouri native garden at my home, including a relatively small stream and pond that I have built and established with plant life over the past year. The pond doesn’t have any fish yet, and I am looking to get started by introducing some members of a small Missouri species in the coming weeks. I am currently interested in getting red shiners / bleeding shiners / carmine shiners / or similar. These fish are meant to be ornamental residents in their own right, rather than stocked as forage fish for other species (large fish are unlikely to be introduced). It seems near impossible to acquire native species like these via retail, so I am considering taking a trip out to do some microfishing in hopes of collecting some individuals of this kind of shiner. I am not really a fisherman myself, and I don’t have equipment at the moment, so I am curious a) if it is possible to catch shiners by wading/floating with a hand net with suitable waters and patience, and b) what would be a recommended location/access point for doing so? Big Piney River seems to be one candidate from what I’ve found online, but I’m open to any reasonably accessible spot. (I live near St. Louis, but I am willing to drive throughout the state) Any advice you can offer is much appreciated!

 

[sitting fishing]

try your local bait shop and include golden shiners on your list

[Al Agnew]

Buy a minnow seine, and find somebody to help you seine.  If you're not familiar with seines and seining, a seine is a net, usually about 3 feet by 10-20 feet.  It will need handles on both ends, usually something like wooden broomsticks.  It will have floats on the top and weights on the bottom.  You and a partner get on each end, and drag it through shallow water, scooping up any fish that are in that water; you will want to drag it parallel to a gravel bar and then the person on the end away from the bar takes his end in an arc toward the bar while the one closer to the bar stops and holds his end there.  Thus you scoop the fish in it out onto the bar.  Pick places that don't have big rocks and other obstructions.  Look for minnows along the bar and when you see them, run the seine.

You CAN use a seine by yourself in small streams...just lay the handle on one end at the edge of a bar with the bottom of the net toward the bar, and make an arc with the other end until you drag it up to the edge of the bar.  You'll get plenty of minnows if they are there.

As bfishn said, you won't get many, or any, of the creek minnows to reproduce in a water garden.  But they will live in it for years.  You are likely to get bleeding shiners, as well as striped shiners, creek chubs, hornyheaded chubs, and stonerollers, and you will probably also get longear sunfish and darters.  In a good creek you may get several more species.

Most of the public MDC accesses on streams near St. Louis seem to be in big pools that aren't conducive to seining, but a few suggestions on easy public accesses that could be easily seined...Reiker's Ford on the Bourbeuse, Mill Rock on the Bourbeuse, Leadwood on Big River, St. Francois State Park on Big River, Washington State Park on Big River, Onondaga Cave State Park on the Meramec River, Bootleg Access on upper Big River, and any of a number of low water bridges on Huzzah and Courtois creeks (also Red Bluff Campground on upper Huzzah).  There are other low water bridges on various creeks in the area that would probably be okay as long as there is an obvious place to park and a lack of purple paint and no trespassing signs.

Be prepared for predators when you get your water garden set up.  When I had one, I had water snakes take up residence in it and scarf down my minnows, and herons would visit it regularly as well.

[rsmcgee]

Thank you all for these tips, and thank you Al for the detailed and actionable instructions and location tips! I am looking into getting a minnow seine and will see how that method goes. Seems promising if I can find a fruitful spot.

Thanks also for notes about expectations for these fish in a water garden. As for reproduction, I am actually hoping to maintain a small, managed population (at least for the first while) to keep the whole little ecosystem in balance, so limited breeding isn't a big worry for me as long as everyone's healthy.

[Gumboot]

My neighbor has a water garden with a nice little waterfall.  He stocks it with goldfish every year.  It's very secluded, set back in a corner of his yard amongst a grove of pines.  How the heron's find it is beyond me, but he sometimes has to restock mid summer.

[Al Agnew]

22 hours ago, rsmcgee said:

Thank you all for these tips, and thank you Al for the detailed and actionable instructions and location tips! I am looking into getting a minnow seine and will see how that method goes. Seems promising if I can find a fruitful spot.

Thanks also for notes about expectations for these fish in a water garden. As for reproduction, I am actually hoping to maintain a small, managed population (at least for the first while) to keep the whole little ecosystem in balance, so limited breeding isn't a big worry for me as long as everyone's healthy.

You're welcome...I had a water garden with about 50 feet of running stream in five separate pools from 1 to 2 feet deep until I moved last year.  Had a big pump to circulate the water from the bottom pool back to the top one, the pump flowed about 35 gallons a minute.  I kept it full of minnows and sunfish, but found that no matter which pool I put the fish in, nearly all would fairly quickly move down to the lowest pool, which was the biggest and deepest.  A few would stay in the middle pool, which was about twice the size of a bathtub and 1.5 feet deep.  I'd have a little trouble with filamentous algae in the spring when the water first warmed up, but it would go away by late spring.  But I had planted some semi-aquatic plants when I first built it, including water willow...and the plants tried their best to take over the whole thing.  That, and trying to keep a ton of leaves out of it in the autumn, where the biggest problems I had.  I finally purchased a huge sheet of netting that was sold to cover whole apple trees to keep something or other out of them, and covered the whole thing from late September until November.  I'd have to clean leaves and sludge out of it about once a year by mostly draining it.  I kept a little stock tank heater in the lower pool in the winter to keep it from freezing solid, and just ran it all winter.  Had a great blue heron that discovered the "warm" water and fish to feed on, and kinda straddled the heater while looking for a meal!  Had a pair of water snakes take up residence; it was fun to sit quietly on the deck next to the lower pool and watch the rocks until one of them stuck its head out from a crevice.  I'd put in green sunfish a couple inches long from time to time, and in a year or two they would get to be 8 inches or more and terrorize the other fish, so I'd walk up to the pool with my fly rod and a fly and catch them and toss them into the little creek in the woods behind the house.  I put crayfish in it, too, and they did well.  Frogs colonized it, toads layed eggs and hatched little black tadpoles, dragonflies flitted around, birds came to drink and bathe...it was an endless source of entertainment!

[MOFishwater]

Sounds awesome Al! Do you have any pics or videos of the former setup you had? I've been really wanting to put in a pondless waterfall/bubbler for the birds but it seems overwhelming at the moment after scouring various websites and youtubes for too long. Might have to wait for the 'next house' like all of our other grand ideas and dreams. 

If any of you other folks have some pics of your setup I'd love to see them also. Its amazing how much of a wildlife attraction a small water feature can be.