This is a picture of Salt Creek. In my 80 years I have had a history with this creek, from catching loads of bluegill in the 1940's to seeing muscles in the water and many years of catching crawfish in the rock strewed bottom. No more. I placed my trap to catch crawifsh for two days that was baited with four kinds of food and got one tiny bluegill.
Then I put my trap in White River that I also have a history with. In the late 1930's and early 1940's during and coming out of the depression people would go to White River and fish in the evening filling their washtubs with fish for supper. I had my trap in White River in three places over three days and caught one two inch minnow.
I think I know what has happened. Every farm field has been laced with the modern plastic drainage tubing so that virtually every gallon of water that falls on the fields in excess is flushed into the streams carrying herbicides and pesticides. So water plants and fish are almost non-existent. I will check out two more streams that used to be pretty clean and try a seine to get some crawfish. It's sad that it take a private pond to have what was used to be a natural environment around here.
