Winter Kill Pictures

[FrontenacPike]

These Pictures were taken of a winter kill near Lake City, Mn.

All the fish were schooled near an open spring. In the mix there were dead bass, gills, and carp.

I took one of the dead carp and put it on the ice below my kitchen window. Saturday morning I had 2 eagles enjoying a free lunch. It was really cool watching them chase away the turkey vultures.

[Sandmannd]

Looks like a pretty shallow pond. Too bad the fish winterkill like that. I like to picture of the eagles eating the carp though.

[upnorth]

Hmmm....isn't normal winterkill a lack of oxygen? An open spring should supply enough oxygen. But it does look pretty shallow, did the water drop way down?

[tisosy11]

Yeah - I have a feeling a lot of the shallower lakes are going to have issues such as this. Hopefully it isn't too bad around the state...

[NCLaker]

What a depressing sight!

What a great smell that must be. Must do wonders for attracting (not) other forms of lake recreation like skiing/swimming.

[BobT]

Were all of these pictures taken during the same time frame? The photos of the fish appear to have been taken in warmer times and on a sunlit day. Then the photo depicting the ones you put out on the ice it appears were taken during winter on a cloudy day.

Bob

[CrappiesNCats]

the fish go in search of oxygen. if they are low they are already dead when they find it. when albert lea lake froze out all the fish tried to swim to the dam but the reason you could take whatever you wanted was that by the time they made it to the dam they would not be able to survive anyway

[FrontenacPike]

The photos of the dead fish were taken on Friday 3-7-8, it was about 10 degrees that day and very sunny. The photos of the eagle eating the carp are from the same lake but taken the next day (Saturday).

The fish were congregated in the open water in search of oxygen from the spring. The problem is there were so many fish in that small area that no matter how much oxygen the spring was producing there just wasn't enough for that many.

[eyepatrol]

One year on the shallow lake my folks live on, there was a winterkill and a huge number of carp died off. They were stacked floating at least 5' from the shoreline.

It makes for a terrible smell when things like this happen. Thankfully, the north half of the lake my folks live on is farmland, so when a good south wind came up, dad and I were down on the shore with pitch forks.

[Chode2235]

Reminds me of when I lived in Cleveland. The shad from lake Erie swim up the Cuyahoga river every spring. Unfortunately for them, sometimes we would get some cold rain or something. That cold water would come rushing down the river and kill the fish via shock. The whole river would be coated with dead shad and other fish.

[onemore]

Here a recent story on winter kill from KARE 11.

http://www.kare11.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=500893

[fisherking01]

The fish are responding more to the current than oxygen in springs. Because groundwater is near 0 oxygen content, the only oxygen present in most spring water is the oxygen it gets form exposure to the air. It is true that they do use up what little oxygen is available when they are congregated this much. One thing about a winterkill, it adds to the fertility of the lake and most will come back quickly once restocked. I was reluctant to post pics of the winterkill that I witnessed with hundreds of pike, suckers sunnies perch.... Nasty site and disheartening, but it's been going on since the beginning of time as we know it! Brent

[addictedjerry]

"Johannes adds between winterkill and the fishing, some lakes are now fishless".

i wonder exactly what he meany with that statement?

[FrontenacPike]

It is very disheartening to see, but it mother natures way of weeding out the weak.

[tisosy11]

Nothing much can be done about it...aerators are a huge plus and they are going in many lakes but that is definately not a cheap way to solve the winterkilling...

[Sutty]

 Originally Posted By: addictedjerry

"Johannes adds between winterkill and the fishing, some lakes are now fishless".

i wonder exactly what he meany with that statement?

What he means is between the liberal limit allowed on these lakes and the fish that are dying there are 0 fish in some of the lakes. They have been completely wiped out.