They killed my Pond!!!!! Heartbroken in OKC

[Quitlimpin]

After searching for 2+ years after moving to OKC I finally found a great pond. It's about 5 minutes from my house and is(was) full of nice sized largemouth. My best catch was around 4-4.5lb. Rolled up this afternoon ready to go, and the closer I got there was a foul stench. The entire shoreline was littered with thousands of LMB, Bluegill and one 25-30" Cat. :'( Fished it exactly a week ago and there was a blue gunk builtup on the top of the water along the North bank where the pond dumps into a creek. Fishing was pretty slow. I definitely knew that this wasn't good, but didn't pay it a whole lot of attention. Fished it on Sunday, and got skunked for the first time. I was even thinking of ...gulp....finesse fishing.

In the pics, anything that you see on the surface is a dead fish. Hard to tell on crappy cell phone pics, but the LMB in the last pic looked to be a solid 5 lb'r.

Thanks for reading my rant. I guess the search is on for a new pond.

[The_Natural]

I would go around to the houses around the pond and see if anyone saw somebody dumping something in the pond.  Stuff like that REALLY pissses me off.  I'd try and find out who did it.  

[aarogb]

    Man that's gotta suck.

     :-[

[vanquish]

Man thats's terrible. So sad to see all those fish go to waste.

[Shimmer]

That is a waste and sorry to hear that. Maybe it's leading you to the real honey hole (yaay optimism)

[Fishing Rhino]

The gunk on the surface looks like blue/green algae.  Algae, in sufficient quantities can deplete the oxygen, which will result in a fish kill.

I'm guessing there was, or had been a southerly wind, which will push the surface algae to the northern shore.

If the die off is due to oxygen depletion, there is a simple solution to keep the oxygen level up in small bodies of water.

Two or three fountains spread out on the pond will keep the water saturated with oxygen.  The water falling into the pond drives air into the pond, and the oxygen is dissolved.

To late for the fish in your pics.

That is indeed a bummer.  I know how I'd feel if it happened to my honey hole.

[Glenn]

Yup, fish kill due to algae.  I have a new article posted on the front page that talks about this very problem, amongst others:

http://www.bassresource.com/fish_biology/hot-summer-ponds.html

[Quitlimpin]

Rhino & Glenn:  That makes me feel a little bit better.  The blue "gunk" that I saw last week was really bright--almost torquise.  I just assumed that there was no way that it was a natural occurence.  

In your experience, does it kill off the entire pond?  Any chance that a decent population will have survived?  The pond is decent sized--prob 5-7 acres.

[Glenn]

does it kill off the entire pond? No

Any chance that a decent population will have survived? Yes.  I think every angler would be surprised to know how may fish per acre a lake/pond can actually support.

[D4u2s0t]

The gunk on the surface looks like blue/green algae. Algae, in sufficient quantities can deplete the oxygen, which will result in a fish kill.

I'm guessing there was, or had been a southerly wind, which will push the surface algae to the northern shore.

If the die off is due to oxygen depletion, there is a simple solution to keep the oxygen level up in small bodies of water.

Two or three fountains spread out on the pond will keep the water saturated with oxygen. The water falling into the pond drives air into the pond, and the oxygen is dissolved.

To late for the fish in your pics.

That is indeed a bummer. I know how I'd feel if it happened to my honey hole.

My lake has a few bubblers in it. d**n i'd be upset if this happened. Luckily my lake is the backup resevoir for the newark watershed, so it undergoes weekly testing and is very clean. But I can't imagine the feeling to go to my favorite lake and to find all the fish belly up. Sorry to hear that

[simplejoe]

Does anybody own that pond. I would find out and see if you can restock it and add some oxygen somehow since you don't live around it and you really can't pull electric from someone house. Either way what a bummer looked like some nice fish in that pond.

                                        joe

[tnhiker44]

Although our first reaction is to think someone or something 'poisoned' the pond, more than likely this is a natural event. And it does not make you (us) feel any better, but Mother Nature has been doing this much longer than we have been trying to 'rescue' these ponds. The pond management folks will sell you whatever they can to 'fix' this naturally occuring event, I can assure you of that. However, biologists not in the pond fixing business more often than not cite the natural cycle of things as the cause of most small pond fish kills.

Assuming this is in fact a natural event I would not spend thousands of dollars for aeration products... Mother Nature trumps all that stuff. She always has and always will.

[Fishing Rhino]

Rhino & Glenn: That makes me feel a little bit better. The blue "gunk" that I saw last week was really bright--almost torquise. I just assumed that there was no way that it was a natural occurence.

In your experience, does it kill off the entire pond? Any chance that a decent population will have survived? The pond is decent sized--prob 5-7 acres.

I wish I had an answer for you.  

If there is an inlet, it might carry oxygen rich water, and the fish in the vicinity of the inlet might survive.

Judging from your photos, it looks pretty extensive.

I'd suggest forming a pond association of some type whose purpose is to prevent this type of thing from happening again.

While the algae looks gross, it's quite harmless unless it depletes the oxygen.  From my reading, maintaining oxygen levels is a pretty straightforward process, and economically feasible.

Talk to the landowners.  Nobody wants a fish kill in their backyard.

Do some research on the solutions.  Speak with biologists in the field.  Get everything in place to prevent such a recurrence, then seek permission to restock the pond.

I have no idea of how involved this would be.  For sure if it impacted me as it has you, I'd be on the march, learning as much as I could, then print up an informational page or two, and go door to door in the neighborhood and pass them out.

Recruit some help while you canvas the neighborhood.

Many hands make light work, and they do have a vested interest in the project.

[cart7t]

Looks like an algae bloom.  Given the heat your area has been experiencing it's not uncommon, especially on smaller ponds.

[NewAngler]

Human or mother nature its a horrible sight to see.

[Glenn]

Do some research.  Start here: http://www.bassresource.com/fish_biology/fish-kill.html  then follow the links at the bottom of the article for more reading.

Enjoy!

[Fishing Rhino]

Here's an interesting side note, regarding the pond I fish.

Last year, the algae bloom started in July and got progressively worse into September.  As the weather cooled, the algae decreased.  It wasn't until late October that most of the algae had disappeared.

This year, the algae bloom started in May.  At times it was so thick on the surface that when you reached into the water, your hand would become a slimy green mess.  But, the algae was only in the top few inches of water.  

Beneath, it was clear, stained, but clear of algae.

In the past three weeks the algae began to disappear, and has been totally gone for a few days now.  I can put my five foot plus canoe paddle straight down, and still see the blade.

Surface temp has been hovering around 80, so it isn't cooling that eliminated the algae.  We've had over ten inches of rain in July, much of it in torrential downpours.  Could that account for the disappearance?

I don't know.  We had a few downpours last summer, and they produced no noticable change in the algae, but the algae was throughout the water column, unlike this year.

One possibility.  An unusually large "spat" of mussels could account for it, or at least some of it.  Mussels are filter feeders, and one of the things they filter is algae.

Over the winter the otter had eaten large numbers of mussels.  I saw the shell piles this spring before the vegetation leafed out.

How badly the decimated the mussel population I do not know.  It's all speculation on my part.  

But, since the algae bloom never extended to the depths of the pond, filtering mussels on the bottom could be the reason.

All the shells in the piles were large.  It's just possible that in the past few years, the mussels had a large year class of spat, that this year have started filtering the water in earnest.

I've seen it happen with bay scallops, steamer clams and hard shell clams/quahogs.

I've seen steamer clam spat so thick when you scooped up a handful of bottom sediment, what looked like coarse grains of sand, were actually seed clams.

I've seen scallop seed so thick on the eel grass that the grass looked whitish.  While the bay scallop, like its cousin the sea scallop is free swimming in the adult stage, when the scallops spawn, the larvae attach themselves to the eel grass with a byssal thread until they develop to the stage where they can deal with water currents.

It's all guesswork, based on "possibilities", on my part.  Right or wrong, I'm not complaining about the disappearance of the algae.

On Tuesday, I caught a bass on a shaky head and finesse worm.  As I worked the fish close to the boat I could see four similar sized bass (about two pounds) trying to get the dangling worm from the hooked fish's mouth.

[Quitlimpin]

Glenn: Thanks for the link.  Looks like that's exactly what happened.

Rhino:  Looking back on my Sunday trip, I definitely remember thinking that there was alot of algae in the upper part of the water column.  I just didn't think anything of it.

Did a little research on the pond.  It is a community lake on Moore city property.  It is in an addition, but the HA has no authority & all homes are facing away.  It's about 8 years old and was dug out to build an overpass for I-35.    

I am going to get in touch with someone at Parks & Recreation.  I also work on a fleet of trucks for the OK Dept. of Wildlife, and Dept. of Agriculture.  Plan on seeing if I can get them involved as well.    

[Fishing Rhino]

That it is a municipal pond is probably a good thing.  

It is the responsibility of the municipality to maintain it.  It depends on resources.  Most communities and cities are stretched quite thin these days.

Still a good idea to involve residents.  The more, the better.

The louder the voice, the more pressure on officials to act on the problem, and hopefully put measures in place to prevent a recurrence.

If you check, I think you'll find fish kills do pose a health hazard, and will require a cleanup of the dead fish at the very least.

I wish you well in the endeavor.   Go get 'em.

[tritz18]

What a shame, hope you find a better pond

[tnbassfisher]

Sorry to hear about that. Hopefully someone will be able to get it cleaned up, and a good portion of the fish survived.

[Bob Lusk]

Let me help out, too. There's some solid information in this thread, some speculative information and some stuff that isn't exactly right.

Here's what happened to that pond.

The fish died because a blue-green algae bloom crashed. Blue-green algae are commonly found all over the nation. Most of the time, blue-green algae are dominated by other, more healthy plants. In this case (which I see way too often nowadays, although in the grand scheme is rare), the blue-green dominated the plankton bloom.

The algae bloom ran out of food and died and/or was killed by a rain event. Alive, algae produces oxygen during the day and uses it up at night. But, when it dies, it uses oxygen to decompose. As it decomposes, it gives off a toxin. When the blue-green is dense, as it was in this pond, the toxin is concentrated enough to assist killing fish. So, between an oxygen depletion and just enough toxin to affect some of the fish, there was a fish kill.

The long term solution is to move the water using aeration. Ponds, especially urban ponds, struggle with "Nature". The grass around is mowed. It's probably fertilized, too. People manage their yards with all kinds of products from pre-emergents to a variety of fertilizers. All this stuff, when it rains, affects an urban pond. There is no natural filtering system where water runs through wetland plants or filters through shoreline vegetation. So, there's not much that's "Natural" about an urban pond. So, I never count on Nature to take care of it. Fountains are pretty, but they don't aerate a pond. All they do is move the top three feet. In order to keep a blue-green algae bloom from doing what it did in this pond one of several things must happen. Someone who understands and knows how to "read" a bloom must watch it and know when to use an algaecide to treat it. Or, when it rains (which is what probably triggered the blue green die off in this case), a manager knows it best to drain stagnant water off the bottom, Or if the pond is property aerated in the spring and summer the bloom would have probably not happened and the fish would be alive and healthy today.

[RoLo]

Let me help out, too. There's some solid information in this thread, some speculative information and some stuff that isn't exactly right.

Here's what happened to that pond.

The fish died because a blue-green algae bloom crashed. Blue-green algae are commonly found all over the nation. Most of the time, blue-green algae are dominated by other, more healthy plants. In this case (which I see way too often nowadays, although in the grand scheme is rare), the blue-green dominated the plankton bloom.

The algae bloom ran out of food and died and/or was killed by a rain event. Alive, algae produces oxygen during the day and uses it up at night. But, when it dies, it uses oxygen to decompose. As it decomposes, it gives off a toxin. When the blue-green is dense, as it was in this pond, the toxin is concentrated enough to assist killing fish. So, between an oxygen depletion and just enough toxin to affect some of the fish, there was a fish kill.

The long term solution is to move the water using aeration. Ponds, especially urban ponds, struggle with "Nature". The grass around is mowed. It's probably fertilized, too. People manage their yards with all kinds of products from pre-emergents to a variety of fertilizers. All this stuff, when it rains, affects an urban pond. There is no natural filtering system where water runs through wetland plants or filters through shoreline vegetation. So, there's not much that's "Natural" about an urban pond. So, I never count on Nature to take care of it. Fountains are pretty, but they don't aerate a pond. All they do is move the top three feet. In order to keep a blue-green algae bloom from doing what it did in this pond one of several things must happen. Someone who understands and knows how to "read" a bloom must watch it and know when to use an algaecide to treat it. Or, when it rains (which is what probably triggered the blue green die off in this case), a manager knows it best to drain stagnant water off the bottom, Or if the pond is property aerated in the spring and summer the bloom would have probably not happened and the fish would be alive and healthy today.

Nice read Bob

I know you're the limnologist, and your reply triggers several questions for me:

1) Is it true that blue-green algae is technically not an alge, but a bacterium known as "Cyanophyta"?

2) If so, is Cyanophyta a plankton-eating bacteria that's generally the result of excess phytoplankton?

3) Finally, although most Cyanophyta is harmless, when a fishkill occurs,

is it generally due to a neurotoxin or oxygen-deprivation?

Thank You,

Roger

[RhodyBass]

Nitrogen and phosphorus in lawn fertilizer combined with a lack of natural vegetation along the shoreline.

[Quitlimpin]

This place is awesome!!  Thanks to all for the wealth of information & responses.  Even if nothing at all gets done to keep this from happening again, I'm gonna go down swinging.  I work alot of hours so having a close to home fishery is something that I am willing to fight for.