North Center – Winters Latest Victim (Winter Kill

North Center Lake fish coming up dead

3/20/2014 4:41:00 PM
North Center Lake fish coming up dead

by DENISE MARTIN

In the last couple weeks since the Chisago County DNR Conservation Officer reported a rare fish kill on North Center Lake; state fisheries staff have been busy responding. Dept of Natural Resources Regional Fisheries spokesperson Roger Hugill tells the Press the North Center Lake oxygen content was sampled March 13. When it tested very low and when a serious fish die-off occurs this sets an “action plan” in motion, Hugill explained. Fisheries will be very busy as soon as the lake ice melts.

Causes of fish die-off can be variable and it’s difficult to say how severe the fish loss is on North Center Lake at this time. Hugill said DNR will electro-fish and net after ice out to sample which species remain strong and to estimate the ability of adult members to reproduce. Expect to see boats with nets or odd-looking fishing equipment on North Center early this spring. “We assume this is fairly severe,” Hugill commented based on photos and actual site visits. “But it’s hard to predict until we get out after the ice is gone.”

There have been extreme fish kills reported all over the state this winter. Hugill said it can happen when the ice is covered by snow and no light penetrates, and when there’s a late ice out, which is certainly the case this year. A normal spring will bring ice thawing and warming temps which create little channels carrying oxygen to the water more quickly. The depth of North Center is also a factor and probably why even bottom rough fish were killed in this recent episode. “It is a natural thing,” Hugill added, and isn’t attributed to pollution or manmade causes, “but on North Center this level of die-off is rare.”

Come spring; if the fisheries experts find certain species are down in number the DNR will stock the lake with needed adult pairs. Ordinarily the only stocking done by the DNR is for walleye. Hugill explained that 90 percent of fish reproduce just fine on their own. He stresses the importance of good habitat to help support the wildlife.

Makes me wonder how many more there will be. Are there going to be a relatively high number of dead lakes that will takes years to come back?

Also, if there are, those are the lakes you might want to watch in the coming years. After Knife Lake was reclaimed, there were several cycles of different species having there hey day until it finally balanced out. Took about 15 – 20 years.

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Also, if there are, those are the lakes you might want to watch in the coming years. After Knife Lake was reclaimed, there were several cycles of different species having there hey day until it finally balanced out. Took about 15 – 20 years.

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I remember when Knike lake (the one near Mora) had its Largemouth Bass heyday sometime in the late 90’s to early 2000’s. What a great bass fishery it was back then. I haven’t been there in over 5 yrs and wonder what the Bass fishing is still like. I think I saw somewhere they still hold tournaments out there.

Yep, that was the time. There is still decent bass fishing, but I’d venture to guess the catch rate has halved, in other words you’d catch half the number you would have in the same amount of time in the hey day. You definitely have to work harder for them now.

I saw that article too, I was kind of surprised to see that type of winterkill on North Center. It does have a lot of water less than 10′ deep, but it also has a 40′ hole on the north end and a nice hole near the culvert going to South Center. I would have to think that there will be quite a few more lakes with winterkill issues this year. Given that many of the dead fish will still stay on the bottom I would have to think that it will be difficult to assess if a lake totally killed out or just partially.

there are several deep areas as noted, I think the issue is with all the shallow weedy bays, and weeds all over, when they die it zaps what ever oxygen is left. Will be interesting to see what will happen.

Personally, I think it has to do with the temps. And I think it has to do with the temps keeping the snow from melting and/or blowing off the lake, choking the sunlight off. And I guess having it diffuse through and extra 12″ from a normal year doesn’t help either. I think we are seeing a “perfect storm” scenario.

It’s too bad more of an effort couldn’t be made to help some of these lakes that are going to have a major winter kill. The first problem is identifying the lakes. The second is, what can you do?

Years ago there was an article in In-Fisherman about this. They did a test where the plowed snow of the ice in strips. In the spring the showed how those areas had nice green weeds while the rest of the lake had brown weeds.
DT

Interesting. No one saw this coming I suppose, but you’d think local fisherman and lakeshore owners would like to employ something like this…if they saw it coming.

Saw this pic on the Star Tribune site today…ugh!

Remember the guy that got busted cheating in the ice fishing tourney? This is a pic of one of his daily catches.

I’m betting that any lake that is a winter kill lake will be killed off this year. In my area there are a lot of them.
Some lakes, because of there make up, are prone to winter kill on heavy snow and a lot of ice. Even when they are a deep lake , they can winter kill. Winter kill doesn’t mean a total kill off.

Loved Bass fishing in this lake. Bass are terrible in low oxygen water so if the roughfish are dying, you can saw goodbye to a lot of the bass. Unfortunately.

That’s what I was thinking.

Funny we should be talking about Knife Lake and winter kill. We plan on going up to fish Saturday. I was also notified they are allowing no vehicles on the lake because they installed aerators. The oxygen levels were dangerously low.

Strib

I’m a little nervous that we are going to see a large number of lakes with major winter kill. Hopefully not, if Big Foot has anything to say about it.

On the other hand, Knife is a shallow lake maxing out at 15′ or so.