Gary Engberg Outdoors

Gary’s Blog Huge Fish Kill on Lake Puckaway on November 12-3-09

gengberg December 3rd, 2009

For approximately the last 2 months, a new commercial fisherman from Minnesota has been attempting to sein carp from the lake with limited success. Last week they found the fish in the middle of the lake, as is typical for this time of the year. Apparently the numbers were more than they could handle safely, as the pictures show. No one has heard exactly why the fish were being held in the nets for the extended period (lack of trucks to haul away fish? lack of manpower for sorting out the game fish from carp?). The DNR and local fisheries biologist was alerted to this on Saturday, Nov 28th. They met with the commercial fisherman and boats and nets were apparently confiscated while this investigation continues. The DNR picked up walleyes from the scene on Saturday and Sunday. These pictures of the south shore were taken on Monday afternoon, Nov 30th. The same scene is also present at the north shore in the areas of the holding nets. The dead walleyes range from 2.5 to 10 lbs, the smaller fish are able to escape through the holes in the nets.
Unfortunately this is a HUGE percentage of the breeding stock of this lake. These fish were “resident fish” that were not migrating up or down stream, during this time of the year, and no doubt would have spawned in the area. Because of the severe damage done to this fishery, it is probably a good time to implement a “slot” size limit, similar to the Wisconsin River and also lower the bag limit to 3 per day, or some variation of this. The fact that there are no big northerns visible is probably due to them being up in the shallows and not in the area of this seining operation. The large walleyes are what keep the fingerling northern in check and this tragedy will obviosly create an imbalance. There were already “off the record” remarks made that this should and would be prosecuted to the fullest because of the severity. It was then stated that there would not be any need for any money to be spent on re-stocking since this is a river system and “it will come back again”. The athorities also stated they expect the game fish mortality to exceed 20,000 lbs.