I went to go fishing in a little pond because it was 41 degrees and I cant wait to fish whenever I get a chance.  So I got there and last year around this time maybe a little later I caught fish consistently.  Today there had to be 20 plus bass dead floating along side the pond.  This is a little pond so I'm not sure how many bass there are in the whole pond total.  There were also dead sunnys.  Do you think it is possible that something happened to the water over the winter and now has no fish?  I am a little worried.

Hey, anything's possible. If the pond is on public land, contact your game and fish department to see if they can have the water tested and analyzed.

If its private I would tell the guy. It sounds like some kind of poison. Could be from murcellus gas drilling, thats be going on. Already saying radio active material is already in the youghany river from that stuff.

This is a common occurrence after a sever winter like many parts of the country have seen this year. If the pond is really shallow it might have frozen to the bottom, or more likely the ice and snow on the ice cut off the sunlight resulting in the weeds dieing. This causes a lack of oxygen and the fish suffocate. It is rare that a lake or pond loses all its fish but the population may be down this year. Tom

this happened last year to a local pond of mine, its just winter kill most likely, due to the ice

Posted By Pegsguy on 13 Mar 2011 09:37 PM
This is a common occurrence after a sever winter like many parts of the country have seen this year. If the pond is really shallow it might have frozen to the bottom, or more likely the ice and snow on the ice cut off the sunlight resulting in the weeds dieing. This causes a lack of oxygen and the fish suffocate. It is rare that a lake or pond loses all its fish but the population may be down this year. Tom

A very similar thing happened to several ponds in a gravel quarry I used to fish. During late winter there was about a month of abnormally warm and sunny weather resulting in large amounts of visible weed growth followed by the return of colder weather with about two or three weeks straight of completely cloudy, cold weather. This caused a die off of the weeds causing both a reduction of the oxygen level in the water and a sharp increase of other contaminants from the weeds dieing off. I was only about thirteen or fourteen years old but I was told that this is what happened by a catfish farmer that I knew that lived nearby.  I found a couple of largemouth bass that were close to ten pounds among the dozens of dead crappie, bluegill, shellcracker and bass. There were also three channel catfish that I didn't know were in there. I thought one was a log floating until I realized it was a very large catfish. Some of the fish were still alive and a friend and I tried to rescue them but it didn't work. Eventually the fish populations did come back but the ponds were never quite the same after that.

There are a variety of things that could have killed them. Probably froze to death.

In order for fish in a lake or pond to "freeze to death" the water would have to freeze clear to the bottom. This is unlikely except in very shallow bodies of water in the far northern parts of the US, and these waters rarely have a population of any sort. Winter kill is almost always oxygen related and affects the species with higher metabolisms first, shad are a good example. Catfish can survive long periods of low dissolved oxygen by reducing their metabolism to a point approaching suspended animation. Tom

Winter kill...lack of oxygen.

Posted By Pegsguy on 15 Mar 2011 11:27 AM
In order for fish in a lake or pond to "freeze to death" the water would have to freeze clear to the bottom. This is unlikely except in very shallow bodies of water in the far northern parts of the US, and these waters rarely have a population of any sort. Winter kill is almost always oxygen related and affects the species with higher metabolisms first, shad are a good example. Catfish can survive long periods of low dissolved oxygen by reducing their metabolism to a point approaching suspended animation. Tom

I think bigfoot killed them...

bigfoot would have ate them

Most people don't know that Bigfoot is a vegitarian!

Bigfoot is omnivirous!

na Bigfoot didn't eat them. he's in my neck of the woods now, I seen him last week all big and hairy. Oh wait that was a mirror.