Around 6:30 this morning I walked my kayak down to the lake in my neighborhood getting ready to fish with a buddy of mine and when I walked up there were several thousand fish (no really!!) swimming at the surface on the dock end of the lake. Me and my stupidity thought they were feeding at first but upon closer examination there were several dead fish floating nearby. The guy that lives beside the dock walked out on and we figured out that the pond had a really low oxygen level (im sure there is a real name for it) and the fish were basically trying to get oxygen and were dying. We said the lake was turning over as a kid.
I kid you not when I say there were thousands and thousands of fish swimming near the bank. There were probably 50 flounder from 3 inches to 15 inches, 5-6 trout, 1 sheepshead, 20-30 spottails from 6-36 inches, 3-4 blues, what we think was a few mahogany snapper, bunches of lady fish, croakers, hundreds upon hundreds of pin fish and mullet (some of the biggest mullet you’ve ever seen), several shrimp and blue crabs. There were also several fish that we could not identify swimming around.
When my buddy got there we walked around and decided that we should grab some of the ones that were descent size and were easily accessible as they were all starting to die. I literally reached in and was grabbing flounder, trout and reds with my hands. We picked up a few of each and took them home and cleaned them trying to keep some of them from going to waste.
One of the craziest things was when I cleaned probably the largest red we caught it had eaten a freakin kids bath toy that was shaped like a fish…
When the water temp is high and you get a big cold thunderstorm the cold rain water covers the surface and pushes all the oxygen to the bottom. Same thing as lake turnover in cold water lakes. This happens periodically on a lot of ponds here. I used to see it on Kiawah a lot, there would be thousands of dead/dying fish gulping for air, and gators and every bird on the island feasting.
Thankfully only a portion of the fish seemed to have died and are floating now. A neighbor says he saw a 6 foot gator today in the lake which I’ve never seen before.
I gues it’s one of those circle of life things that has to happen every so often.
I gues it’s one of those circle of life things that has to happen every so often
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yea, as long as we (man) has anything to do with retention, detention, collection ponds there will be these types of events…we just had a big mullet kill in a detention pond right after a flood tide “refreshed” the salt water in them…glad to hear most of your fish made it…
We have aerators in our lake and pond to prevent that from happening. We have a fresh water lake but I don’t think it matters. Our aerators are designed for our depth and operate under the principle of small air bubbles being released on the bottom; as they rise and expand they carry the bottom water to the top where it is oxygenated by the atmosphere. Keeps the lake circulating. Very ecomnomical to operate becasue they are very low horsepower fans. We installed them ouselves. Check out Aquatio Ecco Systems web site, they have a good explanation of the principles, and other options like fountains, and are probably the best price for quality/performance. It has increased our fish population tremendously becasue it also converts the sludge on the bottom into fish food while eliminating odors.
It’s sad to see those fish dying… I know how cool those salt ponds are…