They killed my Pond!!!!! Heartbroken in OKC 2024

Quitlimpin reply :

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 reply :

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.

Dock Master reply :

Man that's gotta suck.

:-[

vanquish reply :

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

Shimmer reply :

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

Fishing Rhino reply :

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 reply :

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 reply :

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 reply :

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 reply :

Quote
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 reply :

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 reply :

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 reply :

Quote
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 reply :

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

NewAngler reply :

Human or mother nature its a horrible sight to see.

Glenn reply :

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 reply :

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 reply :

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 reply :

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 reply :

What a shame, hope you find a better pond

tnbassfisher reply :

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 reply :

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 reply :

Quote
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 reply :

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

Frog Turds reply :

heres a quick read link on blue/green algae...a few people i know, thier dogs died from drinking waters with it, pretty quickly as well...

http://www.muskegonhealth.net/programs/environmental/algae.htm

Quitlimpin reply :

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.

mrlitetackle reply :

........sorry for the loss man.

cart7t reply :

This isn't just a phenomena in smaller ponds. The ocean also suffers from similar events often known as "Red Tides". Can be very devastating. Those interested in fishing along the coasts, particularly in late summer/early fall need to keep an eye on Red tide alerts in areas they plan to fish.

Bob Lusk reply :

RoLo--Since you asked....

Freshwater, warmwater blue-green algae is, in fact, in the cyano-bacteria class. That makes it a bacteria. It is actually classified an algae, though. Blue-green algae is photosynthetic which means they can produce their own food. Blue-greens have chlorophyl-A-the same as plants have- and phycocyanin which captures sunlight. And, they are aquatic, which puts them in the "algae" class...although they have no relationship to all other freshwater algaes.

It's not really a plankton eating organism. But, it will take advantage of the nutrients released from dead plankton. It's typically found in eutrophic waters (older ponds loaded with nutrients) and makes its living mostly off phosphorus, especially in urban areas or where there's runoff from streets, lawns and such. However, it doesn't depend on that food source since it is one species that can fix atmospheric nitrogen that naturally dissolves in water. That way, it can make its own food. The eutrophic conditions just give it a jump start to outcompete the better algaes and plankton. We see blue-green algae blooms this time of year, after ponds have stratified and are warm. Then, the die off is often triggered by a heavy rain or just the bloom overgrowing itself and nature makes a correction with a dieoff.

The fish kills are mostly attributed to oxygen-depravation. But, another way it "normally" happens is that blue-green algae grows in the water column and as it runs its course, rises to the surface to seek more sunlight to photosynthesize to make more food to continue its life. As it dies, the gasses inside that give it its bouyancy break the cell walls and release the "innards" of the algae/bacteria. Depending on the species, this release can be toxic to fish. It also is a big cause of "swimmer's itch". These toxins irritate human skin and in sizable concentrations, can cause problems for animals that drink the water.

I think the case in Moore, Oklahoma is a direct result of oxygen depletion due to rapid dieoff and decomposition of the blue-green algae bloom.

I see it way too often...but it is still a rare occurence. I happen to be in the sort of business where people call when bad things like this happen, so I get to see it. Still makes me sick to my stomach, especially since it could have been easy to prevent.

That's way more than any of us wanted to know, I'm sure, but you asked!

Live and learn!

tnhiker44 reply :

Quote
it could have been easy to prevent.

Quote
the die off is often triggered by a heavy rain or just the bloom overgrowing itself and nature makes a correction with a dieoff

I am going to guess that somewhere around 90% of urban ponds are never managed. That is a conservative estimate. And yet, based on the natural cycle of things I am going to make another guess... about 5% of these urban ponds do not recover from a catastrophic 'chemical unbalance'. With enough time I guess that 5% is a rather high estimate.

And although I agree that there is nothing 'natural' about most of the urban ponds, I disagree about not counting on nature to take care of it. Either the conditions exist for the pond to 'live' or they do not. If they do not then you have obligated yourself to a lifetime of fighting Mother Nature.

But, then again... I do not happen to be

Quote
in the sort of business where people call when bad things like this happen

Fishing Rhino reply :

All the info on the blue/green algae is great. I am also curious about filamentous algae.

Last year, sections of the pond I fish, had mats of the algae float to the surface, apparently buoyed by gasses trapped beneath.

The filamentous algae, by my observations only, starts out looking like moss on a rock, but it gets very long and whispy. At some point, it turns a brown/maroon/purplish color.

Last year, in places, the trapped gas was obvious in the thinner mats. The gas pocket caused part of the mat to look like a Cypress knee protruding above the surface.

It made sections of the pond unfishable with any type of lure.

This year it has not developed to any of the latter stages.

It is however in the pond year round, unlike the blue.

The areas that have it are fishable, as long as you keep the bait off the bottom.

The mats of this muck are there year round. The stuff does not seem to break down, or disappear like the blue/green algae.

Is the stuff dead, alive, or dormant during the colder weather?

Paul Roberts reply :

Quote
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.

If you look around this pond you can see that Mother Nature is not the only influence here by a long shot. Assuming a human-made pond on a heavily human influenced landscape does not need human management is not recognizing that nature isn't all about bass fishing quality or lots of other potential interests.

At the same time, re-stocking a partial kill is not likely necessary. Knocking off some of the mouths that need to be fed can allow more food for the remainder. Problem here though is, if this happens every few years, this COULD represent a cap on age (and therefore size) of those fish. If this turned out to be an oxygen issue it could be affecting the larger fish first. If it's a localized (say leeward shore) problem (as in algae), then it's possible the pond can continue to produce quality fish.

You didn't say where you are at though is OKC Oklahoma? Those appear to be good sized sunfish they should feed good sized bass. A good sign. Four to 5lb bass might represent old fish in the north a good sign. In OK, I'm wondering what the likely growth should reach for say 8 -10 year old bass -6lbs? 8lbs? I duuno. Maybe the top end sizes indicate that age is compromised in that pond (despite periodic partial reductions). Anyway, just some stuff to chew on.

Here's some recent stuff on algae blloms and fish kills:

http://www.bigindianabass.typepad.com/

Scroll down to: Algae and Its Aftermath

Cableman reply :

Where is that pond? Don't think I know that one. ;D

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They killed my Pond!!!!! Heartbroken in OKC 2024

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