Story Quoted from Pantagraph newspaper, Bloomington IL
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Hook, line & sinker: Evergreen Lake fish rescue too late
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By Scott Richardson | srichardson@pantagraph.com | Posted: Wednesday, July 21, 2010 6:05 pm | No Comments Posted
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Help arrived too late to prevent a fish kill involving more than 50 muskies and several saugeye in the spillway below the Evergreen Lake dam last week.
At least one muskie was trophy-sized, officials said, and at least two saugeye were large enough to potentially eclipse the state record of 9 pounds, 10 ounces, which Evergreen Lake has held for several years. From a purely numbers standpoint, Evergreen Lake receives annual stockings of 900 young muskies and many thousands of tiny saugeye.
A fish rescue is held each year to electro shock gamefish and return them to the 900-acre reservoir. This year’s rescue arrived 48 hours too late.
“While 50 muskies is tragic, the population in the lake will not be impacted and with the continued success of stockings in the future and in the recent past the population will rebound quickly,” said Steve Pallo, director of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources fisheries division. “I believe this is the first such ‘miss’ in many years. It does not make the incident any less unfortunate, but know we take this very seriously and promise to do our very best in the future.
“Seems we are having a rash of other summer fish kills recently a bit earlier than normal … this is weather-related,” Pallo said.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported recently the United States had the eighth-warmest June on record since recordkeeping began in the last 1800s.
Pallo pledged to try to boost the next muskie stocking at Evergreen if fish are available.
The fish kill happened this way, according to Mike Steffa, director of McLean County Parks & Recreation:
A containment fence stretched is designed to keep game fish that are pushed over the dam by high water from escaping downstream to the Mackinaw River until they are rescued and returned to the reservoir. Unfortunately, the fence, which was damaged during previous high water, did not prevent silver carp from swimming upstream from the river and being trapped with the game fish in the spillway.
Freshwater stopped flowing over the dam on July 10. The increased demand from silver carp caused oxygen to deplete far faster than seen in past years when rescue efforts by the park staff and IDNR saved many muskies, saugeye and bass.
The 2010 fish rescue was scheduled for July 14. Unaware of the presence of so many silver carp, officials weren’t alarmed when one dead muskie surfaced on July 12.
“Under normal circumstances, we would have had plenty of time (to wait two days),” Steffa said.
When IDNR fisheries biologist Mike Garthaus arrived for the fish rescue, the game fish were dead. When he shocked the water to see if any survived, “conservatively, a thousand” silver carp shot from the surface, Steffa said. Carp need less oxygen than other game fish to live.
“Unfortunately the carp sapped the oxygen faster than expected,” said Pallo.
Steffa said the rescue could not have been scheduled sooner because a wet summer prevented access to the spillway by an aerated truck needed to carry the fish back to the lake.
Because officials thought they had enough time to do the rescue, no consideration was given to asking the city of Bloomington to open a side gate on the dam to allow fresh water to spill down to the fish, added Steffa.
-- Scott Richardson is Pantagraph outdoor editor. Contact him at (309) 820-3227 or email srichardson@pantagraph.com. Share stories and read past outdoor and fishing columns at www.pantagraph.com/blogs
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