The next morning Ken and I explored some more spots in southern Missouri.  Ken was keen on checking off all the species in the Lepomis genus and that he did!

A tiny trickle of a stream produced a new species of darter.

Brook darter

Nearby frogwater produced a new species of sunfish.

Redspotted sunfish

As well as some other remarkably coloured specimens.

Dollar sunfish

Green sunfish

I caught this topminnow that I had thought was a blackstripe, but finding out later that there are mostly blackspotted in this area I can’t call it either way.

However, I did manage a new species of topminnow at another spot.

Starhead topminnow

As well as yet another new darter.  I can’t believe how many different species of darters there are…

Slough darter

That evening we had some time to check out one of Ben’s spots near our campsite.  I was pretty out of it at this point in the trip.  At one point Ken quoted me as proclaiming “Woah it’s Africa…”

Regardless, we got to the spot.

We ended up with an absolute mess of stonerollers, a fish that we’ve failed to find back home time after time!

Central stoneroller

No shortage of sculpins either.

Knobfin sculpin

Bleeding shiner

Ozark minnow

Rainbow darter

Returning to our campsite after dark, we were in amazement at the sheer number of deer!  Almost everywhere we looked, deer, deer and more deer.