Sad day on lake madison..

[Rost]

My home Lake Madison saw nature at it's worst this winter. Evidently, the 30+ inches of ice took a toll resulting in a nasty winter kill. Here are a few pics I took today. This is only a tiny fraction. My buddy said he had hundreds of fish washed up on his shoreline...

This fish was roughly 27" long...

Another dandy...

Some one lined a few up..

This sucks!

[rundrave]

rost I was waiting for you to chime in. A friend of mine was up there Wednesday night and showed me some pics on his phone.

I was wondering why there weren't any crappie or pearch...he said they are all on the bottom of the lake.

truly sad...just sad.

it will be interesting to see the GFP netting reports to see what percentage of the fish are gone.

[Moses2531]

Its an awful deal, but winterkill has nothing to do with ice thickness, length of winter, or even snow cover... They all add to it the issue, but the truth of the matter is the hyper-eutrophic nature that agriculture in the area makes Lake Madison and every lake in Eastern South Dakota.. There's just WAAAAY to many nutrients, particularly nitrogen and phosphorus that cause massive algae blooms and weed growth... These vast amounts of weeds and algae die in the winter and consume nearly all the oxygen... Unfortunately our walleyes pay the pricE! Hate seeing those beautiful fish wasted like that!

[muc33]

Too bad, never a good thing to see.

[reddog]

If Madison got hit, how many more lakes died out up there?

Thats a terrible loss.

[rundrave]

I saw this on another site:

Test nets were placed in Madison this morning and they will be checked Tomorrow at 2 PM. At 3 PM, they will hold a news conference at the boat ramp on the west side of the lake to announce their findings with the test net.

It will be interesting to see what they find out with the test nets.

[sdstatekid]

My fisheries professor said East Oakwood and Whitewood were hit hard too. I have also heard rumors that campbell winterkilled to but am not positive. East Oakwood had gill nets out last week to see the extent of the damage, I haven't heard the results yet.

[Rost]

Hey Moses- It's interesting to learn why a lake freezes out. Thanks for the good info!

I do have a question though. Why doesn't the lake freeze out every year? Were there more nutrients spilled into the lake this year than others? Also, I fished Madison (open water) a few times in late October and November and the algae had completely died off by then. In fact, it was so clear that I could see the bottom in 8 ft of water.

Any ideas?

[sdstatekid]

My lab instructor said the main thing this year was actually the snow cover. Yes algae blooms are bad but weeds can help especially weeds that stay alive through the winter, in the winter if there is no snow cover as the weeds will produce oxygen as they will continue photosynthesis. If they don't have sunlight they will die and the decompostition will consume oxygen so the snow cover does have a fairly large impact.

[rundrave]

well according to the netting yesterday and news conference, madison is still full of fish

[muc33]

What was all said at the news confrence?

[Mike Walerak]

So are you saying that even if a lake has 12" of ice on it, it will still winterkill? If this were true all Eastern SD lakes would die each year because of the amount of excess nutrients.

The algae doesn't die until there is a limited amount of sunlight, which is from thick ice or snow cover for an extended period of time. Snow and ice cover are what triggers the reaction.

Bummer though, Hard to believe how many fish are actually in a lake.

Why didn't we catch all these fish Rost? Were you holding out on me?

mw

[toddsmidt]

For the record, I can remember long ago (about 10 years or so) when Madison was claimed to be killed off. We had the best fishing that very next summer. Do know if whoever reports that stuff was full of it, or the DNR quickly restocked it.

My point is, this year, it will probably be hot.

Hey Rost, my folks are knocking down their old cabin and building a bigger and better one to retire in someday. I know I always say this, but it never happens, but you gotta come over this summer, or just take me fishing, if you got all that snow out of your boat!