Fish kill

[shiltsy]

This is my last weekend fishing in Missouri (for a while at least) as the move to MN is happening this coming week.

I was out on Smithville (near Kansas City) yesterday afternoon. We have had a ton of rain and this reservoir is the highest I've seen it. I noticed more dead bass than I've ever seen out there. All of them were small. One of them that was floating upside down, I poked with my rod and it actually "came to" and slowly swam back down in the water. It was pretty odd. Any ideas what might cause this? The water temp fluctuated from high 50's to low 60's depending what part of the lake I was on.

I expected to have some good action fishing back in the flooded brush, but I got skunked...

[bassmann77]

The one reason that I remember from college on why a fish might be showing signs that you saw was a drastic change in dissolved oxygen levels. With all of the rain, it caused a lot of runoff and in that runoff could have been different chemicals that caused the DO levels to change. It affected the little fish more because they actually "breath" at a lot more rapid pace than the larger fish. It shouldn't be a long term issue unless the area of the runoff is continually being dumped with the chemicals. This could be one reason of many that the fish shows these symptoms.

[CAMAN]

You didn't happen to be following a DNR electrofishing boat??

[pinkfloyd4ever]

I second bassman, runoff may have diluted the available oxygen %, causing the fish kill.

[SAC]

If you were just seeing dead bass and no other type of fish it could be a virus. For some reason they usually only effect 1 particular species. It's sad though when you see that type of thing.

[EBass]

I agree with bassman. This happened on Lake Rebecca a couple years ago in the fall. Maybe it was last year, but we had a ton of rain and all the musky's in said area where the run off was dumping in were belly up. That took a nice % outa the population. The large amount of rain was the give away.

[shiltsy]

Thanks all... definitely makes sense.

Caman, I wasn't behind the electrofishing boat, but man would that be a fun trip out on the lake. Be pretty interesting to see what comes up.