So who is killing the bass in Green Lake?

Huh it’s not walleye fisherman after all. Actually the bass fisherman. Hmmm Ironic.
https://m.startribune.com/who-or-what-is-killing-the-bass-in-green-lake/600104242/

Can’t read the story anyway since it’s a pay site

It stated the bass were infected with a disease that makes the cut like lesions on the fish. Only the bigger bass that spent time in live wells were affected.

Clear your history. I have never paid.

The DNR started to artificially prop up the lake’s walleye by releasing tens of thousands of fingerlings every year. The stocking efforts have had mixed results.

All was quiet until Dudek pulled what looked like a knifed bass out of the lake this fall.

“Without a doubt this was intentional,” he said. The bass fishing goes through its own peaks and valleys on Green Lake, he said. After the heavy pressure in the early 2000s, the quality and size of the bass catches dropped off for nearly a decade. Over the past couple years, it’s been excellent again, he said.

Bass tournaments are still held in the summer and fall.

After Dudek and others reported seeing scattered dead bass, the DNR was able to net some as they were dying on the lake. They sent them to a lab in St. Paul to be analyzed. What looked like knife wounds on the fish is more likely the sign of a nasty virus, said Isaiah Tolo, a fish health supervisor for the DNR.

“The confusion may be due to the lesions caused by the virus and secondary bacterial infections,” Tolo said.

The pathogen can eat away the skin in a way that looks like a knife wound.

The DNR confirmed Wednesday that largemouth bass virus has been affecting fish in the lake. The virus has only been found in big, keeper-sized fish — the kind that would be caught and put in a live well during bass tournaments. The virus rarely spreads in the open waters of a natural lake, but it spreads quickly inside a live well, when stressed fish are kept close together.

Coahran said it doesn’t seem to be much of a threat to the bass in Green Lake as a whole.

The virus “doesn’t spread very well in a lake, when the fish are not bunched together,” he said. “We’ve only been seeing two or three dead fish here and there, not hundreds of dead fish all over the place.”

Sorry for double topic getting lost in the quote world on an IPhone is really annoying.

Makes sense. I never understood keeping a fish in the livewell all day and then releasing. It’s sad. Especially just for photos of multiple big fish. Should be ILLEGAL.
I wonder why this isn’t seen much else where, or maybe it is?.
That and why it take so long to come up with the answer.

Very interesting. Initially when this problem surfaced it definitely appeared intentional but after some scientific investigation it appears that its a natural virus, simply being compounded because fish are being held in a live well together.

Sounds like the tournament format needs to be altered, at least on this lake. Catch and immediate release only, no weigh ins.

Quite honestly, I think the weigh/measure format and immediate release is the future of fishing tournaments for every species. Most walleye tournaments do this, MLF bass tournaments do this, kayak tournaments do it, and muskie tournaments have always done this. Keeping fish in a live well, especially in the warm summer months, should be avoided if the intention is to release them.

…as if people needed another reason to dislike all the obnoxious bass tournaments

Another reason to not always believe what you read in first instance. I think as a society we have been trained to always have an answer any time there is a problem which leads us to make premature answers and causes a lot of stress. Hopefully this is the true cause to this problem.

^^^^True Cause. You mean the Dnr actually doing a study vs a guy posting a video on Facebook. Guess I will take the DNR word for it.

I hope technology will eventually render Keep/Weigh/Release tourneys obsolete. I know it doesn’t make for as good of a spectacle on ESPN for all the Bass Master fans – but I like the certified bump-board or scale & photo idea that are used to run a lot of smaller tournaments. I’m sure there’s many ways that can be cheated, though. and if it comes down to less than 1/8 of an inch to decide the winner, I suppose it would get controversial if there’s big bucks in prize money and endorsements on the line.

when I fished tournaments I always bleached to clean livewells after a tournament, and used livewell treatment during the tournament.another option would be to shorten tournament hours, and lower the limits during the hotter months.
another thing I have notice that lakes seen to cycle over years they seem to be good for large fish for a few years then nothing but dinks for a few years,I think some of this is due to dnr mandated size limits and fish limits, and the amount of people that catch and kill.( a good bite people flock to that lake)
weed control spraying depleting oxygen levels ,wake boats eroding weed beds also contribute to this.

mahtofire14 wrote:

Can’t read the story anyway since it’s a pay site

For Star Tribune putting a . after the .com usually works like this:

https://m.startribune.com./who-or-what-is-killing-the-bass-in-green-lake/600104242/

Good tip thanks!

Maybe the fish should be masked and vaccinated before being put in the live well.

Most know that there are a few bass anglers that never release a muskie …

Brittman wrote:

Most know that there are a few bass anglers that never release a <strong class=”ido-tag-strong”>muskie …

I can honestly say never have ran into any, I can also say I know a lot of bass tourney fisherman that have caught walleye in a tournament and released them on the spot.

Beast wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>Brittman wrote:</div>
Most know that there are a few bass anglers that never release a <strong class=”ido-tag-strong”>muskie …

I can honestly say never have ran into any, I can also say I know a lot of bass tourney fisherman that have caught walleye in a tournament and released them on the spot.

I’m with you on this one. Never heard of bass guys killing musky either.

I guess I don’t know a lot of tournament fisherman, but I don’t know of anyone who might see a or catch a muskie by accident while bass fishing who doesn’t count it as a cool experience.

And while I love the challenge of catching Walleye, hitting the occasional smallmouth while doing so is a refreshing battle, rather than reeling in a kicking wet dish rag!

I understand there are some die-hards concerned with the smallmouth proliferation in some of the state’s popular Walleye waters, but anyone who kills a native gamefish in favor of another one is not a true outdoorsman or nature lover.

Glad to hear the “Green Lake Massacre” is at least not intentional.

The fish that they netted and sent in for Testing were netted days before the Big bass Bass Tourney that was held out there. There are no tourney fishermen that are putting bass in a livewell Days before a tourney. Large mouth bass virus is in other lakes that have held bass Tourneys and this has never been a issue. If holding fish in a livewell caused a spread to other fish and caused them to die, then there would not be any bass left in lakes like Mille Lacs, Minnetonka, Gull, and many others. Once again I don’t think the DNR has any clue as to what is happening.

I don’t know about that^, every bass fisherman I see “creating content” is throwing their fish in the livewell so they can take their grip n’ grin picture at the end of the day. I fish walleyes where the bass fishermen fish, and more often than not, the larger bass are going in the livewell. I know they end up getting thrown back, but the mortality of that is a whole different story.

fishthumper wrote:

The fish that they netted and sent in for Testing were netted days before the Big bass Bass Tourney that was held out there. There are no tourney fishermen that are putting bass in a livewell Days before a tourney. Large mouth bass virus is in other lakes that have held bass Tourneys and this has never been a issue. If holding fish in a livewell caused a spread to other fish and caused them to die, then there would not be any bass left in lakes like Mille Lacs, Minnetonka, Gull, and many others. Once again I don’t think the DNR has any clue as to what is happening.

There we go… This thread seemed weird with so many people trusting scientists and the DNR.

Yeah let’s go back to blaming it on the walleye guys stabbing them and spewing false information. That was much more fun.

ganderpike wrote:

every bass fisherman I see “creating content” is throwing their fish in the livewell so they can take their grip n’ grin picture at the end of the day

Valid point. Just because there isn’t a tournament, doesn’t mean there weren’t some sizeable bass held in a live well together. I am an avid bass angler and I do NOT support putting them in a live well for a personal glorification photo at the end of the day. I have never done it and I never will with fish I intend to release (unless I am in a tournament of course). If you intend to release the fish, take a photo, and do it. Not difficult.

Bureaucrats and “journalists” spinning a yarn. Wouldn’t be the first time. Won’t be the last.