Lavon:

Today, I have to say, was one of the most amazing trips that I have ever been on. As some of yall know, I hit Lavon the other day and pulled out a 25 lb plus sack at hight noon, needless to say, I left my phone in the bed of the truck to fry. Anyways, I hit the lake after the storm passed and man it was choppy as all heck. Blowing 15-20mph out of the East. I started with trying to get a limit of sandies and then I saw them blowing up with 50 birds diving in the middle of the lake. Went out there and got into them pretty good. Then all stopped. Puttered over to the dam midway and found a small rock pile with fish stacked. Crappie that is. 23 keepers in the boat. I thought I had my 25 but miss counted by 2... Oh well....

After the crappie, I was aleady at the Dam, so I threw out my fav crank bait and started to cast at the rocks.

Bam! 4th cast 6.01 lber



Caught about 8-10 LMB from 3-5 lbs.









Now, this is were my day took a turn. I was at the far East corner working a small drop off and hump. Within about 15 mins the water in a 100 yard stretch started to turn Pee Green Milky looking. Then a small of sulferish... yucky.

10 mins later, I see a shad swimming on the surface dying. Another ten mins later 20 shad gulping air. 15 mins later 1000 shad dying. 15 mins later, Millions of shad, buffs, carp, drum all gulping air and beaching themselves. 20 mins later, sandies and LMB all in 2 ft of water rolling on thier sides. I run out to main lake and fill my live well and bait tank with fresh water and haul rear back to the kill zone. I beach the boat and start picking up 2 lb- 5 lb LMB's by the dozens. Throw them in the live well and drive them out to main lake in the clean water and return to the beach and did this over and over for 2 hours saving the bass and.... get ready........ FLATHEAD CATFISH. They also got stuck in the kill zone and were in 2 ft of water. I think iI am the only one in TX so far that has Noodled flatheads, lol...












I grabbed every LMB and flatty I could find and returned them to the main lake where the water was clean. This went on from 11am till 2 pm and then it gradually started to clean up. 80% of the fish died in the kill zone but no bass or flatties were in there when I was done with them. 100's of sandies, shad, carp and buffs died. One of the flatties didnt make it.

Fish saved:

Flathead Catfish: 3 lbs-45 lbs= 15-20 SAVED

Large Mouth Bass: 1 lb - 8 lbs ( no sheet,9 lber was saved)= 20-30 saved and still swimming.

Video below! Click on the next 2 pics below to see what I was seeing. You can see the cloud of weird looking water in the first video. Anything in that was going to die.





After about 3 hours all returned to normal and the cloud dissapeared and some, some, fish made it but most are up along the bank baking. So, I did my good deed for the day and I am so glad I was there at that very moment of we would have lost over 20 LMB to the freak of nature. I guess the lake turned over in the area..... again, it only lasted 3 hours and was gone.....

Thats something you should report to Kills and Spills team of TPWD - no way the lake should be turning over - that you smelled sulphur dioxide indicates it did indeed burp over on the thermocline -

Its possible there may have been a big methane bubble that burst or perhaps a crack in some piping caused the turnover -- but its waaaay too early for a normal turnover -- were you anywhere near the tower on the dam?

Dang I have never heard of that except for the Jubilee in Ala.
Good job saving the fish.

Awesome story. Thanks for sharing and your act of conservation. Hopefully the weather will break soon so this won't happen more frequently.

far east corner of the Dam in the pocket was the only place it was happening. only lasted 3 hours and them everything went back to normal.

Just curious how deep the drop off was?Im no expert on thermocline but I thought you had to find really deep water for there to be much of a thermocline?

I'm no biologist, but something doesn't sound right. I don't think it was the lake turning over that killed those fish. I would definitely tell TPWD what happened. Just doesn't sound right.

+1

Just talked with Game Warden Martin: He is forwarding the video and my report to the right people. He as well thought it was strange.

from the bank out to 18 ft of water.

Yea need to report what you saw to the kills and spills team. TonyH is right, way to hot for fall turnover.

That is crazy! An experience I hope many of us do not have.

If you smelled sulphur dioxide it does indicate that the anerobic layer of water somehow inverted - that does two things during hot water temps - first it brings up a layer of water where dissolved oxygen is at less than 2PPM - a death sentence for any fish, second the water in the anerobic layer is generally around 61 degrees - which is why you first saw shad affected - they couldn't stand the rapid water temp change of THIRTY degrees along with lack of oxygen - it would affect the smallest fish FIRST followed by progressively larger fish which didn't escape the flip flop of the thermal layer.

Did you look for a UFO takin off?

I would like to know what the TPWD investigation says -- I would also report this to channel eight news to make sure some pressure is brought to bear for an answer

Not only is what you witnessed unusual, its highly unusual for this time of year -

thing is: it last 3 hours and then everything went back to normal with a lot of fish swimming off. I made 2 passes at the end to make sure all the big game fish were taken care of. By then it was clear water and no more gamefish or shad dying. It was like it never happened, except for the fish on the beach......i was there when it started and there when it ended. The big bass weighed 9.20lbs.... still swimming!