Your Thoughts On This ?

[skeeter]

OK, gotta' admit I was stirring the pot kind of chuckling at the comment about "fat stores" becoming exhausted and killing fish. Yeah, we know predators put on the feed bag in late Fall and "stock up" but it's not like they don't eat over the Winter. Cold water Shad die-off always occurs and that's a good thing, within limits. Makes the seagulls very happy :-)

The "die-off" in harsh Winters more commonly occurs in ponds/lakes that become completely iced over and then have heavy snowfall on top of the ice which blocks any sunlight from reaching the oxygen-producing aquatic vegetation which then dies and decomposes, using up yet more oxygen which does eventually kill fish. I've seen MDC refuse to stock private farm ponds if they were less than eight feet deep as those are more subject to oxygen deprivation and fish kill.

The way the article was posted on that source I posted the link to read like fish were similar to hibernating mammals that do rely on stores of fat to fuel their lowered wintertime metabolisms. The same news release was printed in other publications but with more complete explanations.

[fishinwrench]

Yeah I didn't think cold-blooded critters needed a "fat reserve", due to reduced motabolism.

It's my opinion that too many "biologists" are in the habit of making up crap that initially comes across as logical in an attempt to justify their phoney baloney jobs.

Whenever a biologist starts to weigh in on a topic it's time to put your hip boots on, cuz the $#!t is fixin to get deep!

[Feathers and Fins]

Yeah I didn't think cold-blooded critters needed a "fat reserve", due to reduced motabolism.

It's my opinion that too many "biologists" are in the habit of making up crap that initially comes across as logical in an attempt to justify their phoney baloney jobs.

Whenever a biologist starts to weigh in on a topic it's time to put your hip boots on, cuz the $#!t is fixin to get deep!

LMAO..... AHM comes to mind

[Wayne SW/MO]

Saw about 12-14 Bighead or Silver Carp. Drum aside I didn't see a single "predatory" fish, which I don't know if it's a good thing, or a bad thing. Do you guys think those type of fish just die more easily during harsh winters compared to Bass or whatnot?

I believe the drum is a dedicated predator. I would wonder if the Asians aren't starving themselves and the other plankton feeders out? Is the lake connected by flood or some other means to the river?

[Old plug]

Sometimes dead fish under the water sre not. I have seen a couple laying on there sides before looking dead and touched them with a rod tip and they swam away real well. One was a darn good sized hybred laying under my weighbors walkway in about 4 ft of water. we was going to look at it so we got a landing net out. It no more went through the surface and he up and scooted away. I do not understand why they do that but evecently they do .

[Smalliebigs]

I think it's awesome news!!!!....historically I have seen years after big fish kills, the fishing is ridiculous...so I say yes!!!!!

[jpb2187]

Saw about 20 fish at a lake here in the St. Louis area I frequent, a week or two back when that warm spell hit, and the ice melted. ~5 of which were Gizzard Shad, 1 Drum, 1 Paddlefish of all things, which kind of sucks cause I wouldn't be surprised if it was the only one of those in there, and about 12-14 Bighead or Silver Carp. Drum aside I didn't see a single "predatory" fish, which I don't know if it's a good thing, or a bad thing. Cause I rarely catch anything there, and if the fish that are dead are representative of what's actually in the lake, I might as well get into snagging instead, cause it's pretty much all Plankton eaters. Do you guys think those type of fish just die more easily during harsh winters compared to Bass or whatnot?

What Lake?

[Haris122]

I believe the drum is a dedicated predator. I would wonder if the Asians aren't starving themselves and the other plankton feeders out? Is the lake connected by flood or some other means to the river?

That was the only predatory fish I saw, and even at that I would guess a Drum's diet is more broad and let's it survive in more marginal areas for longer than a Bass or something of the kind.

I don't know if the Asians are causing the plankton feeders to starve out, or what's going on. Every winter at that lake quite a few of them end up belly up, so I thought so too before. But at the same time, I don't think that Paddlefish got in there anytime recently from the main river. Seems difficult for a fish that size to make it there without significant flooding. I think it got there while small, and then grew to that size while in the lake. So in that case, if the carp were starving plankton feeders out, I figure it would've died before this winter just cause it's a bigger fish, and every winter some of the carp die themselves. Last summer I think I saw a school of shad at the surface, while I was kayaking there. So in other seasons of the year, there seems to be enough plankton to feed plenty of carp with some shad to spare.

As far as how it connects to the main river, I think mostly through flooding, though it takes some high water to connect the lake directly to the Meramec. There is also something like a drainage pipe that connects the two, when the levels of the lake and river aren't too low. Starts where the boat ramp used to be, and goes underneath the road and emerges at the river again. I don't know how likely a fish would travel through a underground pipe like that though.

What Lake?

This was at Unger Lake, near where 44 and 270 meet, in Fenton.

[Tim Smith]

Yeah I didn't think cold-blooded critters needed a "fat reserve", due to reduced motabolism.

It's my opinion that too many "biologists" are in the habit of making up crap that initially comes across as logical in an attempt to justify their phoney baloney jobs.

Whenever a biologist starts to weigh in on a topic it's time to put your hip boots on, cuz the $#!t is fixin to get deep!

Yeah those silly biologists, using ridiculous notions like "data" and "peer reviewed research" to form their opinions.

Fat reserves in fish often do go down in winter. Even cold blooded animals need SOME energy for metabolism. There's a theory that particularly hard winters combined with inadequate growth of YOY fish during the summer and fall results in large die-offs of smaller size classes of juveniles during winter because small fish have fewer reserves of fat. The data is a bit mixed and it clearly doesn't happen all the time, but winter is no friend to warm water fish.