On August 23, 2020 Elliott Lindsay with Trout Unlimited filmed this amazing underwater footage that shows three species of fish – who would believe it! We think it is special enough to bring it to your attention once more. Click to watch the video.
Lindsay’s intro to the video is as follows: ‘It’s summertime in the creek! This stream is no wider than 2 feet in most places and is hard to even see through the long grass. It’s full of leeches, smells like pond, and has green slime floating on top with cattails all around the edge. This is probably my favorite video thus far in over 7 years of filming fish underwater. The longer you watch, the more little behaviours and actions you see taking place. In this video there are at least three species of native fish which come in and out of the frame:
Video footage – Elliott Lindsay Trout Unlimited
Lake Chub (Couesius plumbeus): the super abundant minnows with the dark lateral line, some sporting the red band for spawning season.
White Sucker (Catostomus commersoni): the larger silvery fish hanging out on the bottom.
Brook Stickleback (Culea inconstans): the small minnows with a pointy snout and marbled green sides, of which only a few are visible hiding around the plants and drifting through the frame.
Here in the foothills and prairies of Alberta, when there is year-round flow, many streams can experience an explosion of life during the summer. Water temperatures can exceed 20°C for long periods of time and there is tons of invertebrates, plants, and algae to support dense fish communities. All these species spawn and grow up in these tiny warm little creeks with many spending their whole lives here. This just goes to show how unbelievably rich and beautiful even the smallest, greenest, yuckiest stream can be, yet these are places that most people will never see or know of their existence, and which have the least protection and regulatory oversight, compared to larger streams with populations of sport fish and greater proportions of publicly owned land. Little creeks are very special places and they deserve our attention.”