Fish Kill on the Red

There has been a big fish kill on the Red at the north end of Fargo. While out taking pictures of our low water I came upon some dead fish. I kept moving upstream and there were more and more dead fish in the river. The majority of the dead fish are small fish but there were a few large walleyes and some large carp. The numbers of dead fish will easily go into the thousands.

The ND Game and Fish have been contacted and so has the MN DNR. The Health Dept has also been contacted and they have been taking water samples trying to pinpoint the exact cause of this.

This is a very sad sight to see, the good news is that the only catfish I have seen floating are just the very small.

Dennis

Not good. Not good at all. Do you think the low water levels alone are the cause or is there a possibility that a sewage leak, etc., is behind the kill? Please do keep us up-dated on this Dennis / Eddie. Thanks.

Hi James,
No word yet as to the exact cause of the kill, it is not from low water though. It has to be something such as a chemical spill or dumping. The area of the river where the dead fish started showing up does have some storm drains and someone may have dumped something into one of those but that is just speculation. I will keep you updated as soon as I hear something. The health dept was out taking water samples again today and both the ND game and Fish and the MN DNR were out in force today. Hopefully they will all work together to figure this out.

Dennis

I did a search on the web looking for some news of the kill but couldn’t find anything… yet. With water this low a chemical spill will have a much greater impact than it would normally. Has the kill ended or are you seeing new dead fish each day?

I hope for your fishery the kill is behind you.

I do think the kill is behind as I ran about twenty river miles today and only saw old dead fish and no recent ones. The bad news is the kill was bad right in the north end of Fargo, large fish of every species was spotted. I saw some very large catfish, walleyes, northerns and carp.

Still no word on the cause, and I will be surprised if they are able to find out what happened. It has been on the radio and TV in the Fargo area but at this point no one is saying what happened. I am sure the low water conditions worsened the kill. I live and fish about 10 miles downstream from the area of the river that had the kill and I am glad to say that I have not seen any floating fish in this area. So what ever it was it was diluted enough by the time it reached here not to do any harm.

If I hear anything I will let you know,

Dennis

So many things could be to blame. Sewage… manure. Or intentional poinsoning. That happened to a trout stream called Hay Creek in Red wing a few years back. Somebody dumped some chemicals and wasted the trout population on a good stretch of river.

I sure hope it doesn’t affect your ability to guide. It doesn’t sound like it will.

Thanks for your concern James. It will have no impact on my guiding but it will have an impact on some of the fall walleye fishing at the north dam in Fargo. I do believe it wiped out all the walleyes in a 10 mile stretch of the river. The local paper here said the kill was mainly just limited to nongame fish but I can tell you firsthand that for every carp there were 10 walleyes. In fact I saw more dead walleyes than I thought were in the river. Although walleyes are not my favorite fish to fish for, they are still fish and I hate to see any fish floating belly up. I do hope there is enough publicity about this that someone will come forward and tell what happened.

Dennis

It is a sad deal guys. I was out on the Red taking pictures bright and early Monday morning, fish were still kicking off at that time too.

You name it, they got hit. I seen cats of all sizes on the snags near Trollwood Park and up to the CO Rd #20 bridge. Plenty of walleye, pike, Mooneye, sucker, Carp, Drum, you name it they were floating or hung up on snags. I seen young cats struggling to keep upright in the shallows too. Very sad!

The DNR and the EPA have collected dead and dieing fish to get toxicity samples. The DO (Dissolved Oxygen levels) were in the norm for this time of year and is not looking like the culprit.

So far the DNR has not eliminated much and will likely not comment officially tell they get more data on the situation. They are looking hard at every possible source of contamination, sampling everything and looking into records of any facility associated with the drainage in that section.

I personally feel it is a “Contamination Event” and not a dissolved oxygen type summer kill. The wide variety of fish hit and the immediacy of the kill to me indicates a contaminant. I would even venture to speculate it may be a “Meth Lab” dump site contamination. We have seen many METH related dumps on or near the rivers in the past year. That is my call, not that of any authority’s, be clear on that. At least not so far anyway.

I have been in contact with my old boss’s in the DNR and the situation is getting maximum attentiveness. They are on it, in a very big way.

I think the kill has stopped, but we will see more game fish pop up as they gas up. I suspect that is what Dennis is finding more walleye up his way now, new floaters popping up. I spotted more walleye yesterday too, and some huge pike.

YUP…..VERY SAD!

That is a darn shame. As James stated earlier, we went through a similar tragedy some years ago on Haycreek. A few years before that farm runoff was accidentaly spilled into the Big Trimbelle creek and caused a large kill. I certainly hope this situation on the Red wasn’t something done intentionally. If it was I hope they find the responsible parties and string them up.

Gator Hunter

Was the outcome ever made public?

The outcome of the fish kill was never made public. They blame it on low water levels and I am sure that made the situation worse but that was not the primary cause. I have still been trying to get answers from the officials but with no avail. I really do not believe they had any evidence against the company who controlled the culvert where whatever killed the fish came from.
If I ever hear different I will post it.
Dennis