The five to seven feet of snow that fell this winter across East River is bringing up lake levels, but that snow and the thick ice on our lakes lowered the oxygen levels and killed off a lot of fish. But on the bright side…
“It can be a good thing it will get the rough fish out of these lakes, the state will get them restocked, and in two years, it’s going to be good fishing again,” said Matt Staab, the owner of Northview Tackle in Sioux Falls.
[Minnesota Department of Natural Resources Southern Regional Fisheries Manager Jack] Lauer agrees and says it can lead to cleaner lakes.
“Clear water returns because you don’t have this biomass of carp and other buffalo fish that are recycling nutrients in the water,” said Lauer [Tom Hanson, “DNR Official: Worst Winter Fish Kill in Two Decades,” KELO-TV, 2023.04.18].
Perhaps the hard winter will have a similar cleansing effect on the human population, encouraging the Blue State refugees who have come seeking Kristi Noem’s Freedom™ to return to milder states where they are free of the smell of dead fish and CAFOs.
We will finally be able to test that often cited theory that the long, cold and snowy winters keep the riffraff out.
Rough fish, like coyotes, cockroaches and magats always survive and re-infest a suitable habitat shared with “woke” humans.
Yes, it’s great to dramatically lower the rough fish population in a fishery. But long before those undesirable species die when the oxygen levels plunge in a fishkill, the more desirable game fish die off first. That’s because the rough fish can survive longer in oxygen-deprived waters. The more the rough fish population grows, the less oxygen there is during big snowy winters and summer hyper-eutrophication periods. It’s a vicious circle that puts game fish at a tough disadvantage, especially in the glacial lakes. If it were not for the S.D. Game, Fish & Parks’ restocking program, you’d have to go to Minnesota to find a reliable walleye and other game fish fishery.
Sounds somewhat like the socialism about which Kristi keeps complaining.
I recall carp in large windrows along the shores of Lake Poinsett in the 1960’s. Smelled to high heaven. They cleaned the shoreline with tractors and front end loaders and buried the fish in a large pit to the east of the present state campground. There were a few walleyes and northerns in the mix, but as I recall, fishing did improve rather quickly. Carp come into the lake from the Big Sioux canal, which was dug in the 1930’s in an attempt to put more water in the lake…a bad ecological decision.
Asian Carp are considered the “woke fish” of Poinsett, according to many locals.
Scoop some up. They make tremendous fertilizer.
Well Nick, Hurray for the Riff Raff was a great group but they were from New Orleans. The cold would kill them.