The Spottail Shiner

Happy Fish Friday, everyone!

This week I want to put the spotlight on a flashy fish. If you fish around the Great Lakes, then you have probably seen your fair share of them. I present to you the Spottail Shiner (Notropis hudsonius); their defining features are the following: elongated body, laterally compressed, and tall (at the dorsal fin); they have a short head with a large eye and slightly sub-terminal mouth, and a rounded, protruding snout. Their bodies are silvery with no lateral band, ending in a distinctive black caudal spot (hence their name). Populations on the Atlantic Slope are almost opposite in appearance. They are shorter, less silvery, have a lateral band, and have a smaller caudal spot.

A Spottail Shiner from the Upper Des Plaines River, IL. Credit: Paul DeRolf

Spottails reside primarily in large lakes and rivers with clear waters and substrate composed of sand and gravel. Spottail populations on the Atlantic Slope can be in pools of smaller streams with sandy substrates. Being a mid-water species, they are tolerant to various substrate types as long as they are silt-free and clean of clay deposits. As a species, they are intolerant to turbidity and high siltation events. The diet of Spottail Shiners is made up of aquatic insects and they occasionally feed on snails. They eat insects out of the water column or pick them out of algae on the shoreline habitat.

Typical habitat for Spottail Shiners. Black River, OH, near the boundary of the free-flowing portion and lacustuary of Lake Erie. Credit: Paul DeRolf

The spawning season for Spottail Shiners usually occurs during June and July as the water reaches warmer temperatures. They school up and form aggregations over sand and gravel riffles near the mouths of tributary streams. In Lake Michigan, female Spottails have deposited their eggs into algae mats on water intake cribs and the boulders of break walls. In cases with lake-dwelling populations, there have been reports of Spottails making spawning migrations up the tributary streams in late spring or early summer.

A Spottail Shiner from the Black River, OH. They can lose scales pretty easily. Credit: Paul DeRolf

Spottail Shiners have a wide range that extends along the Atlantic Slope from New York down to Georgia, then west into the Great Lakes and Upper Mississippi River basin. In places like Lake Erie they are the second most abundant minnow. They were originally described in the Hudson River (hudsonius is a nod). Because of this, some fish biologists believe the Great Lakes and Upper Mississippi populations are a different species, but now, they are lumped together. Spottails are a popular and widely used baitfish. Consequently, they have been introduced well outside their native range to eight different states and sixty-two different watersheds. Most of the introductions were in lakes, as a food source for sport fishes when people thought they were stocking Emerald Shiners instead. Other instances were more than likely due to the infamous “bait bucket biologists” or anglers who just dumped their bait into the lake rather than properly disposing of them. *Even though they are common please do not continue to transplant these or any other species outside their range.*

Range map for the Spottail Shiner. Native ranges are in orange, introduced ranges are in maroon. Credit: USGS NAS program.

There is no wrong way to observe Spottail Shiners. The best and easiest way is probably to try and fish for them. If you find yourself in the waters of the Atlantic Slope, you can also snorkel in the sandy pools of shallow streams. If in the Great Lakes, you’ll most likely have to SCUBA dive to be face-to-face with these shiny fish. Spottail Shiners are also known to do well as aquarium fish. If you provide them with enough space and decent amounts of flow, you could keep a school of them with other minnow species. No matter how you decide to see them, remember to make sure that you enjoy, protect, and enhance our freshwater ecosystems!

Spottail Shiner from a large tributary stream to the Lower Des Plaines River, IL. Credit: Paul DeRolf