The Northern California Fly Fishing Board

Whew! Where did last week go? I meant to post this days ago.

Last weekend GM and a friend of a friend, Dennis, came to the North Fork Feather to help me collect hardhead and Sacramento pikeminnow for my study. They were a huge help, and caught lots of fish for me. I was a real slacker and didn't take any pictures in the field, but I have a few from the lab.

Hardhead (top) and Sacramento pikeminnow (bottom), showing the differences in headshape and mouth size:



Hardhead (left) and Sacramento pikeminnow (right), showing the difference in "lips". The hardhead "lip" is connected to the "face" by a frenum. The pikeminnow "lip" is folded all the way across the snout:



Anchor worms (Lernea), in a hardhead (in the pelvic fin and belly). Lernea are copepods, like sea lice.



Lernea after being removed from fish:



A trematode, showing the attachment hooks:



Thanks again to GM and Dennis for their help! I really appreciate it!

Dawn

And great pics!

That trematode is creepy. Kind of reminds me of Predator.


Buzz

That is actually the "foot" of the trematode. The picture of the whole trematode didn't turn out as well. I couldn't fit the whole trematode in frame under that magnification (400x). The hooks are the most interesting part anyway. It uses the hooks to anchor onto the skin/scales. The head is on the other end. Still pretty creepy though. Hopefully, I will get some of those stained and mounted on slides so I can take better pictures (and clearer pictures).

Here is a picture of the whole parasite at 250x. It is kinda hard to see. The big black circles are air bubbles, and the trematode is curled around the bottom half of the left air bubble.



I found this parasite when I did a wet mount of a skin scraping.

Dawn

Thanks for sharing Dawn. Really interesting to look at and see the obvious and suttle differences. I enjoyed the parasites the most.... Hmmm what does that say about me?!?! Hopefully that I'm just curious!

Congratulations on the GWWF award too! Awesome and very deserving.

Claudia

Always good to learn something new. Now tell us, What is happening with the pike minnow and why? (Under 10,000 words please)

something called a neematode ,from new zealand is the only 1 out of 2 predators against the nzms,and works on the nzms reproductive system ,rendering it sterile ,but theres not enough known about its affects on the united states water systems ,so hence we will be doomed by this wandering parasite ,sorry just had to chime in
dbl d