Fishing Forum

Anyone know what caused the death of tons of dead perch seen floating and along the banks of the Weber river this past weekend. I was just curious.
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What part of the river did you find them. With the heavy releases of water from the reservoirs, fish are regularly washed out; it's not uncommon to see fish where we don't normally see them.
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If the perch you found were below Echo, it is possible that they are perch that died during the Winter when people were ice fishing and returning them. Some perch do not survive well when they are brought up from deep water. Then with all the run off water they got flushed down stream. Just a theory.
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[#0000FF]If the perch are all sizes, it could be a winter dieoff like Jordanelle experienced about 10 years ago...and Rockport about 5 years ago. In those cases there were lots of dead perch of all sizes floating and washing up on the bank at ice out. But it didn't take the seagulls long to dispose of the evidence.

I question the dead release theory. Most folks keep the bigger ones. And fish that die of the "bends" tend to float...not sink and flush out through the dam. I would guess that they died while near the bottom and fully pressurized...then were sucked out with the big water releases.

Without a full biologist CSI the actual cause of death is not likely to be known...just as with the perch dieoffs in some of the other lakes. There are some parasites and viruses that periodically infect them.
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In addition to what Pat said, I wonder if live perch sucked out during a dam release could have been killed just by the turbulence alone. Either during the passage through the dam structure or downstream. Perch are still-water fish. Maybe they just don't survive well in churning, rock-filled rapids.
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[#0000FF]There is doubtless some mortality for fish violently flushed into raging turbulent downstream waters. But perch have been washing out of Pineview and Deer Creek for years...into Willard and Utah Lake respectively. So, some do survive.

I would be interested in knowing whether there is evidence of fish kill on the shorelines of Echo.
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Right again, TD. I suspect there might be a lot of variance, depending on flow rates. At the usual minimum discharge and low stream flows, a trip from PView to Willard might be nothing at all for a perch. At Spring runoff rates, maybe not so much.

At any rate, they are seeing dead ones, so there has to be some reason why. As you said above, we'll not know unless and until they study it.
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The same thing happened on the Ogden river in 2011 when we had really high runoff. Panfish cannot survive high flows especially when the water is really cold.
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[quote TubeDude][#0000FF]If the perch are all sizes, it could be a winter dieoff like Jordanelle experienced about 10 years ago...and Rockport about 5 years ago. In those cases there were lots of dead perch of all sizes floating and washing up on the bank at ice out. But it didn't take the seagulls long to dispose of the evidence.

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Those die-offs also occurred around this time of year. Hopefully, the population in Echo isn't depleted too much. It was showing some promise this year.
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They were seen by a friend of mine up by Henefer, Thanks for all your replies.He caught some browns with their bellies full of perch.
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