Dead Lake

[Blackfish Bobby]

A question for the ice fishing sharpies.... We ice fished a small private lake yesterday in Sussex County. Tucked away at the base of the Appalachian mountain. Not a flag all day using fat heads and shiners..15 tip ups..nothing jigging. This lake is normally loaded with nice fish. This lake is so private we were the first to fish it this year. It appeared to me that the lake has gone oxygen deficient..... Shiners coming out of the holes dead after soaking a while. 15 inches of ice and the feeder creak and swamp frozen solid. HAS ANYONE SEEN THIS BEFORE. Thanks for your thoughts and info.
Despite the lack of fish it was just an awesome day on the hard water. Very very strange for this lake. This brutal winter up there may just be too much stress on such a small shallow lake.

[FASTEDDIE29]

The fish should start moving around more with the warm long days among us. During the winter 90% of the fish only use 10% of the body of water so they say. Maybe there's a channel they're all ganged up in. The panfish should be in the weeds hiding from predators. Man, we've had the longest winter that I can remember. Delaware river was all iced up, small trout streams, big rivers and everything in between had some serious ice this year. I drive through the great swamp to get to some of my jobs, that was all frozen for at least 10 weeks. Ice, ice and more ice! Dying bait seemed to be a real problem this year. If the bai shop tank was using somewhat warm water for the shiners and you put them in a frozen hole, it shocks or kills them instantly. Good luck out there!!!

[Eskimo]

.


Winter kills from lack of oxygen are rare but it does occasionally happen.
Here's an article about it:
http://www.aquaweed.com/pdf/Winterki...ct%20Sheet.pdf

If the water did go anoxic, you'll probably see a lot of dead fish floating up to the surface when the water gets warm enough for them to start decomposing.





.

[catfishonthelake]

There could be other explanations for the dead shiners besides lack of oxygen. I'm curious if they had their mouths open when they died. I know that if you fish herring below the "dead zone" on LH in the summer they come up with their mouths open. I've had bait die sometimes if a)the bait wasn't very good (cough cough Hi-Way Sports) or if I did not let the bait acclimate to the cold. I always bring ice cubes and start throwing a few in when I buy my bait, when I pull up to the lake and when I start setting my tip-ups to get the bait adjusted to the cold. If a bait shop has their bait in 60 degree water and you throw them right in 33 degree water, they will die. Also, you might want to go to the NOAA website and get the 3 day history for weather. I'm not sure what day you fished, but I've gotten skunked even on some of my best lakes. These days almost always occur when there are no clouds in the sky and the barometer is above 30.20in. Not sure if I'm telling you anything new, but just figured I could offer a few other scenarios since I would assume lakes becoming depleted of oxygen has to be pretty rare.

[Blackfish Bobby]

Thanks to all you guys......this is good information. Ice fishing is not my specialty but we sure love doing it....especially this winter when the blackfishing shut down real early !!!!