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A Sacramento-San Joaquin Watershed Grand Slam has
been on my mind frequently of late. Now I'm not gabbin' about some
stupid fucking baseball game, nor the typical fisherman’s "Sierra Grand
Slam" - a brookie, goldie, 'bow, and brown in one day - an attractive
if hackneyed ideal, and one that I've attained. No, no, no, I'm
thinking of, pining for a pithier Grand Slam, a native
California Grand Slam, one that simply can't be earned in one day since
the four species I'm lusting for are far more formidable opponents than
some meathead chucking fastballs or some high-elevation trout desperate
to eat anything in their miniscule growing season. I'm dreaming of a
native-minnow Grand Slam, of being the stud able to catch well, through
all seasons, Sacramento squawfish, Sacramento splittail, hardhead, and
hitch. And it's quite a lofty goal, given the lack of information about
these four relative to the average game fish - trout, black bass -
compounded by the restricted distribution of splittail, hardhead, and
especially hitch. So to inform the growth, to accelerate the
relationship, I felt it'd be worthwhile to kick down and couple some
scientific juice about these bad muhfuggahs with my own experiences.
Okay, so the Big Four, evolving in the same
watershed for millennia and deriving from a common ancestor, share many
attributes. First, they get big, they live long, and they produce a ton
of eggs, features that allow 'em to escape shrinking waterways during
prolonged droughts while exploiting expanded waterways in the eventual
wet year (Winemiller and Rose 1992), both recurring conditions in
California. Second, all four are spring spawners that separate their
bedrooms from their living/dining rooms: splitties dump eggs on
floodplains but chew in turbid tidal waters (Feyrer et al. 2015, Moyle
et al. 2004); squaws and hardhead shoot babies onto pea-sized gravels,
often in small tributaries, but haunt deep pools when not lovin' (Grant
and Maslin 1999); and hitch also pepper gravels with eggs, frequently
in ephemeral streams (Feyrer et al. 2019), but chill in still or very
slow-flowing waters (Leidy 2007, Jeffres et al. 2006). Third, they have
both a chain of bones connecting their ear to their swimbladder
("Weberian ossicles") - an amplifier, basically - and a pheromone that
warns others of danger, so they are very sensitive to sound and smell,
useful features for a watershed that was frequently muddy (though all
four can see pretty well, too - they have average-sized eyes, and
splittail's skull shape facilitates downward vision). Deducing from the
foregoing, two more attributes must exist: the Big Four must be
exquisitely sensitive to flow changes, and they must feel very
comfortable when light is low.
Now for a few notable species-specific
quirks.
THE BETTER LARGEMOUTH
Squaws are unique among the four in that they own a big fuckin' mouth
and aren't shy about using it: they are the only one of the four that
chomps other fishes. For the most part, squaws munch benthic fishes:
yellowfin gobies and prickly sculpins (Nobriga and Feyrer 2007).
However, they aren't that picky and will happily nab an errant
silverside, shad, small salmon, or even their own young (Stompe et al.
2020, Brown 1990) if they've the chance. Similar to other top
predators, such as brown trout and largemouth bass, adult squaws will
also feast on crawdads. Translating science into art, typical fish- and
crawdad-imitating lures that work for trout and bass - swimbaits, jigs,
and plugs - should also work for squaws. And fuck me, they do - I've
banged lovely squaws from a foot-and-half to well over two feet on
Pointers, on tube jigs, sculpin swimbaits, crawdad swimbaits, and, at
night, buzzbaits and Sammys...with a little bit of fish scent rubbed on
the lures. Nevertheless, each lure type is not equally attractive to
squaws through all seasons. A recurring pattern is that squaws will
annihilate a fast-moving hardbait far more in spring and autumn than in
summer or winter. Turns out that, unlike many other fishes, squaws swim
fastest in cool water (Myrick and Cech, Jr.2000) - they just don't have
the legs to run down a rippin' jerkbait when it's either blazing hot or
freezing cold.
THE BETTER SMALLMOUTHS
Grouping splittail, hitch, and hardhead together is sensible given all
of 'em own cute little mouths that preclude piscivory. Instead, they're
mainly bug-eaters: splittail chew clams and scuds and mysids (Feyrer et
al. 2003); hardhead'll slurp aquatic insects and crawdads (Moyle 2002);
and hitch'll feast on zooplankton, midges, and terrestrial bugs (Geary
and Moyle 1980). Expressions of their small mouths and their low
reliance on sight for feeding - they are far more susceptible to small,
live baits than to lures, and they are delicate, prolonged biters,
seemingly needing to knead and savor a bait to decide whether it's food
even if the water's clear, not unlike either their non-native relative
common carp or their common buddy Sacramento sucker. With inedible junk
mixed with insects in stream drift, with inedible junk mixed with worms
and scuds and clams on the bottom, with little light available in the
murky water for quick prey identification, it's a starvation strategy
for such fishes to feed in fast currents. Instead, where bugs and clams
and worms concentrate, and where they won't get swept away by fast
flows, that's a more profitable buffet. In a word: eddies. Splitties
much prefer chewing in eddies at deep confluences from mid-flood to
mid-ebb, and though hardhead will move into riffles at dusk, both
hardhead and hitch - man, especially hitch - nearly always feed in
mellow eddy water close to seams.
ACTUALIZATION
So how's a fish Romanticist put this info into practice to get some
action with these lovelies? Welp, these big minnows demand more for
success than the typical largemouth and the omnipresent rainbow. Gotta
pay very fucking careful attention to river flows, especially in
spring, and knowing small tributaries with good gravel is fuckin' KEY
since pre- and post-spawners will be nearby eventually (don't be an
asshole by fishing spawners). Can't ever ignore those big, deep, slow
pools for hardies and squaws and hitch. Gotta do the business at dawn,
dusk, at night under a big moon, or, if the water's turbid and/or the
sky grey, during the day. Have to step upstream only and with a soft
foot - don't wanna catch a fish that releases the danger cue and scares
desired fish holding downstream, and don't wanna bang the gong of those
Weberian ossicles. Need to be critical about pulling out a
fast-and-jerky thing for the big-mouther during summer and winter. If
small-mouthers are the quarry, fuck Christ - gotta keep the
presentation slow and smooth and real and small, especially if the
water's turbid, and gotta keep it on the soft side of those debris and
foam lines. Distilled - gotta keep continuously attuned to Nature's
myriad rhythms, get absorbed into those rhythms, for connection to
come.
And going the cheap, lazy route to look for the
hot tip on the game-fish-saturated Internet chatterboxes - ain't gonnna
help 'cause they've few words, fewer of value, on these magnificent,
mysterious fishes. And maybe that’s why the average modern fisherman
shuns our big, beautiful native minnows - they demand too much from
those willing to expend so little.
REFERENCES
Brown, L. R. 1990. Age, growth, feeding, and behavior of Sacramento squawfish (Ptychocheilus grandis) in Bear Creek, Colusa County, California. The Southwestern Naturalist 35(3): 249-260.
Feyrer, F., B. Herbold, S. A. Matern, and P. B. Moyle. 2003.
Dietary shifts in a stressed fish assemblage: consequences of a bivalve
invasion in the San Francisco Estuary. Environmental Biology of Fishes
67: 277-288.
Feyrer, F., J. Hobbs, S. Acuna, B. Mahardja, L. Grimaldo,
M. Baerwald, R. C. Johnson, and S. Teh. 2015. Metapopulation structure
of a semi-anadromous fish in a dynamic environment. Canadian Journal of
Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 72: 709-721.
Feyrer, F., G. Whitman, M. Young, and R. C. Johnson. 2019.
Strontium isotopes reveal ephemeral streams used for spawning and
rearing by an imperiled potamodromous cyprinid Clear Lake hitch Lavinia exilicauda chi. Marine and Freshwater Research.
Geary, R. E., and P. B. Moyle. 1980. Aspects of the ecology of the hitch, Lavinia exilicauda (Cyprinidae), a persistent native cyprinid in Clear Lake, California. The Southwestern Naturalist 25(3): 385-690.
Grant, G. C., and P. E. Maslin. 1999. Movements and
reproduction of hardhead and Sacramento squawfish in a small California
stream. The Southwestern Naturalist 44(3): 296-310.
Jeffres, C. A., A. P. Klimley, J. E. Merz, and J. J. Cech, Jr. 2006. Movement of Sacramento sucker, Catostomus occidentalis, and hitch, Lavinia exilicauda,
during a spring release of water from Camanche Dam in the Mokelumne
River, California. Environmentla Biology of Fishes 75: 365-373.
Leidy, R. A. 2007. Ecology, assemblage structure,
distribution, and status of fishes in streams tributary to the San
Francisco Estuary, California. SFEI Contribution #530. San Francisco
Estuary Institute. Oakland, CA.
Moyle, P. B. 2002. Inland Fishes of California. California, University of California Press.
Moyle, P. B., R. D. Baxter, T. Sommer, T. C. Foin, and S. A.
Matern. 2004. Biology and population dynamics of Sacramento splittail (Pogonichthys macrolepidotus) in the San Francisco Estuary: a review. San Francisco Estuary and Watershed Science 2(2): Article 3.
Myrick, C. A., and J. J. Cech, Jr. 2000. Swimming
performances of four California stream fishes: temperature effects.
Environmental Biology of Fishes 58: 289-295.
Nobriga, M. L., and F. V. Feyrer. 2007. Shallow-water
piscivore-prey dynamics in California's Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
San Francisco Estuary and Watershed Science 5(2).
Stompe, D. K., J. D. Roberts, C. A. Estrada, D. M. Keller,
N. M. Balfour, and A. I. Banet. 2020. Sacramento River predator diet
analysis: a comparative study. San Francisco Estuary and Watershed
Science 18(1): Article 4.
Winemiller, K. O., and K. A. Rose. 1992. Patterns of life-history diversification in North American fishes: implications for population regulation. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 49: 2196-2218.