Fish dead all over Fellows Lake

[navery]

What mopanfisher said except make sure once you smell bleach at a faucet inside the house,  run all faucets until you smell bleach. Shock your entire system.  If you don't treat all water in all the lines,  the bacteria can work its way back through the system. 

[fishinwrench]

I think I'd rather drink whatever nasties might be in there than to drink bleach.

The thing that (kinda) concerns me is that I run outboards over my well every day.  Seems like some of that would get back into my water supply, but my water is always crystal clear and tastes pure and delicious.   It's loaded with minerals though because we have to vinegar the coffee maker by-weekly, and owning a dishwasher has proven to be a waste (they won't last 3 months) unless a softener is put inline, which for some reason I just don't want to do.  So we wash dishes the old fashioned way.

[MOPanfisher]

Unless somehow the water is literally running back into the well head, which it shouldn't be able to do there isn't any real way for it to get into your drinking water, it has a couple hudred feet of earth to filter it.  I don't like soft water, never have so I just keep plenty of white vinegar around along with some Worx.  The aerator screens on the sinks have to be soaked a few times a year.  Oddly our dishwasher I bought in 1996 and is still going, we do run cleaner through it about every month.  Coffee maker, I Coffee I think gets water run through a zero water filter, at least it does when my wife refills it.  Water heater is the biggest pain, about once a year I get to replace the elements and I have a piece of copper tubing that will just fit in the element hole to remove what I can of the accumulated lime.  Just part of life on well water.

[fishinwrench]

My place sits at an elevation of 704.8 The lake elevation is 660ish and less than 1/4 mile away.    My well pump is only 70' down.  I can almost pull my pump by hand, just have to use a bumper jack for the first 3 sections of pipe.

[tjm]

I read that in limestone country water in wells and springs can be basically unfiltered underground rivers from far away, that gives me some concern about what someone else dumped. Rain in Nebraska and Iowa appears to bring  the springs up here in dry  years. Years ago I lived not far from one of the Superfund  dumps and fished a stream that ran close to the "pig farm" where leaking barrels of hazardous waste were found, sudden fish kills not readily attributable to the obvious give me pause. Do water treatment plants regularly test for chemicals?  The county water company only checks for bacteria and only treats with chlorine, but that's well water and though I helped build a water plant on Beaver I don't recall any process there that would take out hazardous waste, it's been long enough ago that I may have forgotten.   

[misfitfishingco]

On 7/28/2018 at 3:07 PM, Brandon Inman said:

Went out today to do a little bass fishing saw probably 20 or so flathead and channel catfish anywhere from 5-20 lb range dead. Several bass 2-4 lb range floating dead and quite a few crappie. Found a walleye looked to be a keeper same thing all in the south arm of the lake. Kept fishing and noticed a bass swimming next to the boat right on the surface and was covered in some kind of brownish green stuff all over it and was soon to be belly up as well. Dont know what caused it or what it is but i doubt i keep fish out of there until its figured out.

Noticed this as well back in mid July when I was last out there. Guessing with the hot water, and lack of oxygen due to less vegetation with the water so low, maybe caused the fish too much stress producing extra mucus (green/brown slime you saw on them) and eventually killed them off? Did you talk to MDC about it?

[Terrierman]

On ‎7‎/‎29‎/‎2018 at 10:39 AM, fishinwrench said:

Yeah, you gotta filter it and add enough poison to immediately kill the things that can make you sick, but not enough to kill the people immediately.  

A customer gave me a test kit and instructions on how to test my well water.  I have been drinking it for 20 years so I decided I'd just rather not know.  

Who here has a well and periodically has it tested?   And if it ever tested bad then what did you do about it?

Yes I have a well and it's tested - last time maybe four years ago.  It's always been fine.  I've treated many wells over the years with chlorine pellets.

[fishinwrench]

29 minutes ago, Terrierman said:

Yes I have a well and it's tested - last time maybe four years ago.  It's always been fine.  I've treated many wells over the years with chlorine pellets.

The guy that gave me the test kit went through this outragous procedure of letting it run for 2 minutes then sterilize the faucet with a propane torch, then let it run for 10 seconds THEN take the sample and send it off to some faraway laboratory and wait for test results. 

That was over a year ago and I'm still not in the mood for all of that.     

[Terrierman]

45 minutes ago, fishinwrench said:

The guy that gave me the test kit went through this outragous procedure of letting it run for 2 minutes then sterilize the faucet with a propane torch, then let it run for 10 seconds THEN take the sample and send it off to some faraway laboratory and wait for test results. 

That was over a year ago and I'm still not in the mood for all of that.     

That's proper sampling technique.  Bleach solution from a spray bottle is easier on everything than a torch.  Ideally you do not sample from a mixing faucet or a hose bibb because they are difficult to disinfect.  The point is to check the bacterial quality of the water, not whether some spider or something has crawled up the water spout.  My faraway laboratory is the Christian County Health department.  It's about five miles from the house.  Test results are available in 24 hours by phone, maybe four or five days if you wait for mail.

[bassfisher]

Well I've seen it like that out there before in my years of fish in Fellows Lake but I've never seen that many fish that we're dead however there is a lot of algae up in the upper end of the lake and with high temperatures and low water and oxygen issues I would say that be a good cause for it. One thing to put in consideration is is that Lake the depth of it varies.