Dead fish on Star Lake

[mudlakeladyjane]

Out pontooning this weekend & noticed ALLOT of dead northern on top of weed beds on the south/southeast side. What was the cause of the dead fish & what are the weeds?

[Avid Angler]

Star by Litchfield??

[mrpike1973]

That's not good. I know the oxygen levels get low on that end but should not be that bad yet.

This by Litchfield correct?

[fishingstar]

this is what a person of the lake association got in response  from the DNR

 

As we discussed on the telephone, I wanted to write you regarding the reports of a fish kill at Star Lake with the hopes that you will share this with members of the Lake Association. Our office first heard reports of a fish kill in a few messages on Tuesday, September 6. We returned those messages and collected what information we could from those reports. What has been consistent in the reports are that dead fish have been showing up for about a week. I’ve heard of northern pike and bullheads being reported so far. MN DNR Fisheries does have a pathology laboratory that handles these kind of incidents for pathogen testing, however they do want fresh specimens (within 24 hours) and often times the results are inconclusive. Since running pathology testing is expensive, it is often reserved for very serious fish kills, like acute fish kills in streams or lakes that are associated with pollution discharge.

 

In the case of Star Lake it sounds like a more normal event and is on a small scale. One report Tuesday talked about 20 dead northern pike. Thankfully on a 550 acre lake, that’s a small amount. Many times with summerkill events, what occurs is we get a run of warm weather or cloudy, windless days, photosynthesis is inhibited, and at night when photosynthesis is completely absent, pockets of hypoxia (low dissolved oxygen) occur around the lake and trigger small, isolated fish kills. That doesn’t fit the weather pattern of late and this appears to be only happening at Star, so I’m guessing this is limited specifically to Star Lake, whatever the cause. At any rate, it’s small scale and a natural occurrence, and I wouldn’t be too concerned over it.

 

Most importantly I would like to thank the people that have contacted our office. There is no way our staff can be everywhere, all the time, so we are really dependent on good citizen observers in the field. I would encourage your group to contact us if anything like this comes up again. If your Association is willing to send those reports through a single person (I believe you mentioned you would be the Assocaition’s DNR representative), it does make our life a little easier as we aren’t having to return numerous telephone calls and emails.

 

Thank you to all the people that have contacted us. I look forward to working with the Star Lake Association on future Fisheries partnerships.

 

Best regards,