Hard To Keep Up

Male chubs have sprouted breeding tubercles, small pointy bumps on their heads that look powder blue against their brown bodies from here. We aren’t exactly sure what purpose tubercles serve. They may be used to show dominance, spar with other males for prime territory, demonstrate fitness to females, or all of these. It may be that the male with the largest/most tubercles wins the females affections. While the males have sprouted tubercles, I don’t notice any of the nest bowls they excavate for spawning. A huge brown trout snuggles in tight to a rock Brook trout are so abundant they are common place. A sunny is out in an eddy. Black nosed dace school the way they have been for the last two weeks. A month ago this pool was a very different place. There wasn’t the abundance and diversity of fish life that is here now. Only benthic marcoinvertebrates and incredible bedrock architecture. Today it is full of life and spring changes from a slow emergence to a rapid expansion. I can spend a lifetime here in this one pool and never fully observe and understand it. There is always more to discover and learn, and right now things are moving so fast, it’s hard to keep up.