Good to hear some fish made it. All indications are we had a 100% kill on trout over the winter in Shadow (our staff had to clean-up hundreds of dead trout at ice out), which is not surprising given their higher oxygen needs. I did see quite a few dead bass and sunfish while surveying the damages at ice out, but definitely less than the number of dead trout. Again, not terribly surprising given bass and sunfish don't need quite as much dissolved oxygen in the water as trout. Although much of the lake had DO levels under 1.5ppm by late winter (lethally low levels to any of these species), there were a few areas where seepage and creeks enter the lake that could have served as refugia with higher DO for some of the luckier fish. The responsible party that caused the problem (based on an extensive investigation) has agreed to pay to restock the lake w/warmwater fish this year...but we may not need to put in as many as I had initially suspected might based on the fact that some fish survived (most fish kills are not 100% kills, but involve varying percentages of a lakes/ponds fish population based on intensity). An electrofishing survey early this summer will reveal the extent of our current warmwater fishery, as well as how much supplemental stocking we'll need to get the lake back in good shape.
On a related note, I recieved a record number of calls from concerned pond owners this year who experienced fish kills, in two cases the only time this happened to them in about 30 years of pond ownership! So it was a bad year for fish kills in vulnerable lakes, in general.
On a postive note, we did not have any dead fish in Judges Lake this winter, which was a relief given DO got pretty low there, too (although not nearly as low as in Shadow). Trout that were sour and not biting under the ice there this winter did survive and put on the feed bag a ice out, so I will not cross this pond on off the list of lakes we'll stock with trout in winter quite yet.
Mike
