Tailrace

Data obtained from the Academy of Natural Sciences at Philadelphia, Canadian Museum of Nature, Fort Hays Sternberg Museum of Natural History, Illinois Natural History Survey, University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute - Specimens, University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute - Tissues, GBIF-MNHN (Paris), North Carolina State Museum of Natural Sciences, Swedish Museum of Natural History, Oregon State University, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, University of Washington Fish Collection, Yale University Peabody Museum (Accessed through the Fishnet2 Portal, www.fishnet2.net, 5/5/2022).

Flathead in the West

I created this dashboard to give myself some insight into the times of the year and locations that some of my favorite Kansas gamefish have come up in sampling data collected within the state. Some interpretations are obvious: it makes intuitive sense that most of these observations were made in the eastern third of the state, where there is more rainfall and there are more rivers and streams that hold water year-round. Channel catfish, being our state fish, are appropriately by far the most common fish observed. Additionally, it makes sense that the most recorded month for a sampling observation of each of these fish is July, as freshwater gamefish tend to be most active, and in shallowest water, in the summer months. This is also partly due to the fact that sampling is easier in the relatively high but stable water levels associated with midsummer. 

One note that stood out to me in making this dashboard was how many streams in Western Kansas are classified as "intermittent," meaning that they do not hold water all year. Those are the grey lines on the map. Looking at the observations made on those intermittent streams, it's clear that at least some once had more reliable flow. The dataset I obtained goes back well over a century, so ecological change can be inferred by old sightings of big river fish in now mostly empty tributaries. The furthest west flathead catfish sighting, for instance, is from 1910 in a place called Hackberry Creek near Banner, now a ghost town in Gove County. 

I've caught a couple dozen flathead catfish in my life; most of them by accident jigging for wiper or fishing with store-bought worms on the bottom in the hopes of bringing home a channel cat for dinner. Compared to some of the river fishermen I know, I am relatively ignorant about the habits of our largest and most mysterious fish.  I have, however, seen their unmistakable underbite on heads hanging from fenceposts in La Harpe, and personally witnessed three men unload a one hundred pound flathead from a johnboat on the now-filled-in boat ramp on Mud Creek in Leavenworth county. That's a story for another time, but let it serve as my credential for interpreting this data point.

Flatheads, as any good Kansas limb-liner knows, are big river fish that travel upriver and sometimes into smaller tributaries during the late-spring flood season. To find one in a county that is now almost devoid of running water for parts of the year is surprising to say the least. I suspect that before intensive center-pivot irrigation, however, they were common in the west all the way up to central Gove County where Hackberry Creek diverges from the currently intermittent Smoky Hill River. 

Below is a satellite image of the spot where, as best I can tell, that flathead was caught. It shows a waterway you could easily cross with a pair of muck boots. The photo looks like it was taken in the winter, but still it is hard to imagine even in the spring flood that this series of shallow pools accommodated Kansas' largest riverine apex predator. 

I doubt my dashboard will help me catch more of my beloved river fish near my southeast Kansas home, but by happenstance it illustrates a sad reality about anthropogenic environmental change in Kansas. We may never again find such an animal cruising up Hackberry Creek near Banner on a spring spawning run.