Went to the Web. today to do a little fishing. I belong to a little club just below Echo Res. Anyway got on the river and once again saw a steady stream of mostly dead and a few dying fingerling perch floating down the river. This has been going on several days that I know of. The banks are littered with dead fingerling perch with a few larger up to about 3". Now, can you imagine the quantity of fingerling perch this amounts to over several days? I'm not talking just a few floaters. This is a steady swath of em apparently coming out of the damn??? Now if you were a few miles down river out side of this club area you'd probably only see an occasional floater, but being as I'm up close to the damn, I can better see what's happening. No dead trout or other kind of fish, just these fingerlings. Needless to say, the trout weren't bitting. Probably gorged on fingerlings. Anyone knowwhat's going on? [shocked][:/]
Leaky
[#000000][size 4]Is it possible that these dead perch are the results of small perch caught during ice fishing, released because of size, and then died as a result of being caught at great depth?[/size][/#000000]
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[size 4]As has been pointed out several times on this forum, perch do not survive release after being caught in deep water.[/size]
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[size 4]My guess is that they are just finding their way to the spillway, and washing out of dam.[/size]
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Can't buy that, far, far too many. Just in about 1 minute of watching them go buy I would estimate that there were more than a hundred float buy. Can you imagine how many that would be in just a few days??? Also, when I say fingerlings I mean like 1-2 inches.
Leaky
below what res?
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Like I said - Echo!
Leaky
[#000000][size 4]That's my best guess Leaky, If it were something toxic in the water, it should get other species.[/size][/#000000]
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[size 4]BTW, are you scooping them up for bait?[/size]
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Quite a few years ago, I was fishing Pineview. In one of the coves, I found hundreds of perch littering the banks. They were all tiny as well. I couldn't imagine what had caused it. Later on, I ran into a Fish and Game officer at the boat dock. I told him what I had seen and he said that there were so many baby perch with nothing to control the population that they had actually depleted the area of oxygen and died. I wonder if this is what has happened here and they were all washing down stream.
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To tell ya the truth I didn't even consider it. May have been able to use em for kitty bait at Ut. lake, etc. but I'd have to check the regs. before I used em. All other fish I stick to artificials.
Leaky
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I'm not an expert, but I would guess that the schools of baby perch swam too close to the outlet and were sucked through the dam. You see this at quite a few reserviors. My father in law works for Weber Basin water during the summer and has to clean the grates on the Weber river just below the confluence of the Ogden river, before it goes under I-15. He has found schools of dead perch and even a Tiger Musky in those grates. The only palce they could come from is Pineview. Every once in a while someone will catch a Tiger out of the Ogden river. Take Willard for example, the fish are sucked through and end up in the channel feeding the bay. A lot of them survive and live in the channel until they stop taking water out of it, then they die. How do you think that perch got into Echo in the first place? They weren't planted by the DWR. Most likely they came down the river from Rockport. It would be a pretty violent passage going through the dam, most of those little fish would die, just like you saw. But there are always a few that survive.
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[cool][#0000ff]That happens with baby perch on all the reservoirs from time to time. Some say it is a virus...but if only one year class is effected, I would question that.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]When large numbers of young fish...of any species...are dying off it is usually a result of a block in the food chain. As the babies outgrow their food supply, or the food they need is dormant and unavailable, they simply die off. They are just getting big enough to feed on newly hatched fry...but there isn't any yet. Too early. And also too early for any emerging invertebrate life.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]That happened to perch of all sizes in both Jordanelle and Rockport a couple of years ago.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]I have also seen it happening on Willard Bay, with baby crappies. Same thing. They survive on zooplankton up to a point, but then there is nothing to eat when they reach a size to be able to feed on something bigger. One morning in my tube, in the south marina, the water was covered with baby crappies. But, as soon as the birds woke up they cleaned up the evidence pretty fast.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]That is going to be bad for the lake because those little perch are a big part of the forage base for all species in the lake.[/#0000ff]
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Could make for some big healthy fish on the weber though.
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TD I just don't know how you do it. [
] You maybe gruff and blunt on occasion but you always come up with the "goods". I'm truely envious. [
] Yeah, I know, you've dedicated your life to this but, ----------, even though, you're an unrecognized fountain of info. [
]
Leaky
I can answer your question. I was a form employee of Bountiful City Light and Power and every spring when we would start the hydro at the bottom of Echo we would flush out the penstocks each year when we started to generate power. I was always amazed at the 1000's of fingerling perch that were killed each spring, when had been spawned in the safety of the penstocks. Those turbine don't chew them up but being rattled around in the turbine does kill the majority of them. I hope this answers your question
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Just my opinion, but I'm not entirely sure about the zooplankton theory. I've found from stomach analysis that even adult perch and crappies rely primarily on zooplankton as a staple in their diets. Very rarely do I find other food than daphnia and other zooplankton in perch and crappie stomachs. Pineview is one exception. The crappie feed on some unique type of aquatic larva which I have not taken the time to identify as yet. It is greenish colored and slender. However during numerous times of the year, the plankton again becomes the primary staple. Even wipers have mostly plankton in their stomachs at this time of the year along with midge emergers. Large fish can and do sustain themselves on plankton. Of course a predator like a wiper can't live on that for long before they starve, but panfish can thrive solely on plankton.
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[cool][#0000ff]No question that larger fish can survive on plankton. But, the kicker in Willard is the gizzard shad. If large schools of them move into an area and filter feed heavily, the food resources drop. They move on to feed elsewhere but the baby crappies stay behind and starve.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Just a theory.[/#0000ff]
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[cool][#0000ff]Sounds like that might be an annual occurence then. Reasonable explanation.[/#0000ff]
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Heck Fred, I think the poor little things feared you so, they just died.[
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Hey bud, what are penstocks? Kind of like "catch basins"? Anyway, I suspect fishing is going to be quit poor for some time to come in that area with the trout lunching down.[:/] They sure will be healthy and fat for a while.
Hey Killer - are you trash talking? [laugh][laugh][laugh] Love it.
Leaky
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Here's an article that explains the same thing Tubedude mentioned about the fish starving. And it was a harsher winter than we've had in a long time. Just a thought.
Pacs
Perch die-off at Henry Hagg Lake determined a natural event
Date:May 16, 2006 Contact:
Danette Ehlers, 971-673-6000
Fax: (503) 947-6009 SALEM - Local fishery officials today announced testing results on dead yellow perch at Washington County's Henry Hagg Lake indicate the fish died of natural causes, likely related to spawning stress.
Area anglers began reporting dead perch approximately 10 days ago. Fishery experts estimate as many as 3,000 perch may have died. The lake also is a popular angling destination for rainbow trout and smallmouth bass, but the die-off was limited to yellow perch and appeared to mostly affect male fish.
District Fish Biologist Todd Alsbury said examination of the dead perch found all had empty stomachs, likely the result of prolonged cold temperatures in the lake this spring that inhibited natural food source production when the fish normally would have been feeding heavily just prior to spawning.
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[cool][#0000ff]Thanks for the article.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]I have seen local fish dieoffs all over the country. In some cases it is sudden changes in water chemistry or temperature. In other cases it is a result of disease. In those cases you will see fish of all age classes dying. [/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]In other cases it will be only certain age classes or gender specific. In many of those situations you will find that the fish dying are dying from lack of food for the affected group.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]The perch dieoffs below Echo are most likely because of them being in the wrong place at the wrong time...when the turbines are turned on.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]The dieoffs at Rockport and at Jordanelle in successive years have been generally attributed to a viral infection...since it was observed in perch of several age groups. But, without benefit of a lab analysis, that cannot be proven either.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]The good news is that fish dieoffs are like forest fires. The initial damage seems frightening to us humans, but in the long run it may actually improve conditions overall. Seldom is the dieoff 100%. The survivors are genetically tougher and will produce tougher offspring in the future. Fishing might be slower for a couple of years, but it usually doesn't take long to recover if the water levels are high enough for a good spawn.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]We have had a longer winter, with some waters having an ice cap longer than normal. There is always some winter mortality, but it could be worse on some lakes than others. Total water depth, existing weed growth, amount of light allowed through the ice, inlet water and other factors can all contribute to what happens to the fish under the ice during the winter.[/#0000ff]
[#0000ff]Be properly thankful we now have open water...unless you are an iceaholic.[/#0000ff]
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