May 2024 • Nebraskaland 43
or gravel, they preferred gravel mixed with sticks.
One nest I saw was entirely on sticks. The nest in which
I observed the spawning behavior was on sand, full of
sticks and one chunk of log, and surrounded by vertical and
overhead rushes and sticks. Another nearby was in cover
that was identical.
The fi rst question Tony Barada, another fi sheries biologist,
asked when I showed him the photos and questioned the
location of the nest was if there were predators nearby.
Indeed, there were. On my previous visit to Red Wing two
weeks earlier, I found a school of small bluegills in shallows
of the same backwater. Lurking nearby in deeper water were
three largemouth bass that would periodically dart into the
school, hoping for lunch.
"Maybe that was a mechanism of getting out of the way, or
being sheltered from the bass," Barada said of the nests. "But
it is such an odd observation you saw in general. In a setting
like that, where it's not a big backwater area, that could've
been the only way to potentially have success in that deal.
"It's amazing, in our natural world, how many anomalies
there are. There's stuff that organisms do that are very
unorthodox. They're all individuals."
Had I been smart enough to know what I was watching, I
would've lingered longer. Had I done so, I may have been able
to watch the female actually deposit her eggs.
One thing I know for sure, however, is the next time I fi nd a
bluegill nesting colony, I'm going to put down my fi shing rod
and watch. And come back later with the underwater gear.
N
The bluegill beds observed in the Elkhorn backwater at Red Wing WMA looked nothing like the ones most anglers are
accustomed to seeing, such as this one in a farm pond near Brady, where males have fanned the sand out of the bottom and
guard the gravel beds. JULIE GEISER, NEBRASKALAND
