Copied from Inland Fisheries San Angelo District Facebook page:

A toxic golden alga bloom, which has caused multiple fish kills the past few months, is persisting in the upper portions of O.H. Ivie Reservoir and continues up the Colorado River all the way to Ballinger. Additionally, toxic conditions are present in the Concho River arm of O.H. Ivie and in Elm Creek near Ballinger. Toxic golden alga blooms only affect gill breathing animals and won't harm people or livestock. However, the bloom negatively impacting our fish populations in these areas. Fishing is likely to be very poor in these areas. However, the lower portion of O.H. Ivie Reservoir appears to be unaffected and still offers good fishing.

All sites in the map below showed high toxicity on May 10th with the exception of site #2 Colorado River at the US-67 bridge in Ballinger, which was non-toxic. We will continue to monitor and provide updates as we get them.

The section of river just north of the Concho ramp looks like you poured dish washing soap in the sink and added water, noticed it while following a boat and the water turned bubbly.

Well shoot...hope it doesn't bleed over to the Brazos. The fishing on Lake Whitney just finally got good again!

Rip

The fish kills have been Gar,Carp,crappie and Whites so far. I haven`t heard of any bass so far but that doesn`t mean it hasn`t happened. Hopefully this will go away without much harm. Fishing is not bad right now, numbers are pretty good in the 2-4 lb range.

thats not good hope it goes away soon , I thought it only happened when the water was really cold.

Ugh. Yep golden algae hurt PK, Granbury, & Whitney in past years. Don't need it at Ivie.

It's been found up the Colorado side in many of the past years. I remember about ten years ago fishing a tournament there an old man told me not worry about going past the water station up the Colorado side as Golden Algea had killed all the fish. We are very familiar with golden Algea out here in the west. We had it in Lake Colorado City, Lake Champion, Lake Spence, Moss creek lake, just to name a few. Even up river on lake Alan Henry. The lake though after a few years seem to come back. Especially if we get good rainfalls.

Something is up with that watershed, with all the rain out there the last 2 years it should have been in better shape. I think a good flushing is what helps those systems that have ga keep the levels low. I lived near south end of granbury in early 2000s when it got hit hard. It's a bad deal.

Some of the cause in my opinion could be all the farm land north of the lake that fertilize the fields and we had rain so it could be running in the river and helping with some of it. Ballinger has water contamination issues so that could be part of the problem.

Can they not treat it to kill it? I mean they [censored] kill the grass when they want!


http://www.bioverse.com/?utm_source=goog...CFUGTaQodIWUF-Q

Agree with 21xs on the chemicals used, about 5 years before the bloom that hit the Brazos we heard the EPA made changes on the water shed on what could be used to kill mesquites,spraying cotton and wheat. Killing our good alga's allowing the golden to bloom. But you think they would admit it.

Oh I think it absolutely has something to do with commercial agricultural fertilizer. Look where it tends to show up. North Colorado river lakes, brazos lakes. Both have plenty of farmland in there watershed.