Lake Winnebago Fish Die Off

Please discuss the fish die off here.

My ex-wife grew up in Fond Du Lac, they called it Lake Winneseptic.

That's funny sometimes, when on the Lake, I can smell Menasha! Must work both ways. Mrt.

Here at my place of employment in Menasha I can smell lake Winnebago inside the building. Extremely strong stench coming off of it lately. Just had my septic tank pumped at home, kinda reminds me of that same smell. Cant be good for anything swimming in it I'm guessing.

And the water flowes threw goes to the whole water shed!!!!!!

https://fox11online.com/news/local/blue-green-algae-expands-in-lake-winnebago

So a fish that eats a contaminated fish and then swims to a different body of water spreads it to that body of water....potentially.

According to dnr website the VHS is spread through bodily fluids of fish. It cannot survive in the GI tract of birds that eat the fish.  As far as the boat itself tranferring the disease between water bodies NO.  Though livewells containng traces of bodily fluids, possible.

I find it interesting that transmission from body of water to body of water is confined to boaters. What about infected fish moving from body to body or scavenging birds such as pelicans, gulls, or for that matter the skunk of the water cormorants. Can the virus be spread that way through their droppings? Just a thought.

news/releases/article/?id=4556

thanks 1up, here's a clickable link

Tell all the dead bass, gills, crappie in front of my dock that they had no issues. LOL  What a joke! 

Kamke from the DNR says nothing to worry about, only saw sheephead carp etc. dead after ice out. I ask "Do all fish float after death?". "Ever see a dead sturgen floating around, some must be dead of old age."  

So, here we are, June 12 and still no word on what's going on. Seem a little strange?

I've been living on the lake for the past 31 years. Fished it since the 60's. Nothing has happened like this in the past. So what's going on????

We got our pier in the last week of April. When the ice went out we had what appeared to be sand along the beach. It was mostly stone until then. On closer inspection it was zebra mussel shells. Mostly crushed and some full about 6-8" thick.

Since then I've been fishing off the pier. Been almost two months and the only thing I've caught was a 10" walleye and a 7" bass. The lake stinks yet and the water is sort of clear with a tannin tint to it. The carp did not spawn. The catfish bite did not exist...no gills, crappie or sheeps and there have been no signs of any YOY.  By now there should be tons of them feeding along the shore.

And yet, we hear nothing. Nothing in the paper or on the news. Makes you kind of wonder what the hell is going on.

Wondering if the cladophora algae that is causing issues in Lake Huron and Michigan is contributing to this. The zebras clear up the water allowing for massive algae blooms. When this particular algae dies, it piles up on the lake bottom and creates a toxic environment including botulism. If nothing else I would think it could contribute to weakening fish allowing for other diseases like vhs to attack a weakened individual.

Same on the south end. Still some dead and dying fish. Mostly smaller sheeps, but did see a couple large ones as well. Water temp and time length of die off doesn't seem to fit VHS. After seeing this on a larger scale. I do recall seeing these sized sheephead on occasion last fall doing the same death roll. 

I have been on the lake 12 of the last 27 days and the die off is waning.  I would say we are in the last stages of what ever this event is.  I was on the water on Sunday from 5:30 in the morning until 7:30 pm (fishing and boating) and there are still dead or about to die fish, but a small percentage of what it was 2 weeks ago.