I apologize for not getting back and keeping all up to date, frustrating as it is, I actually "forget" that I have even posted a cry for help unless I see another dead fish, and we have been lucky since that odd destruction of our main big CC supply....things have gone normal again.
I watch the fish feed each evening and they are quite aggressive, creating a boil as they have for so many years, yet unlike all the years past when those very large CC took control over the mass of the food and took first pick at it, before the death all all those CC it took less than 2 minutes tops ( often in less than 60 seconds in mid summer ) for all activity to subside as all the pellets had been taken.
Now, without them, the feeding is just as aggressive, but it takes the fish 5 minutes to completely clean up less than a quarter of the amount they used to get before the loss. So looking at it overall, it seems to have returned to normal, for the time being anyway.
One odd note, a newscast yesterday said that a large number of fish, all "sucker fish" as they described them, had suddenly been discovered floating on the surface, ( Table Rock Lake ) just as mine were, except for the species, they said as it turned out, the fish died due to the very large amounts of rain flooding in lots of nutrients and ( late in the year they pointed out ) that combined with high water temps, set up a case that when the plankton died they used oxygen, and basically all these yellow Suckers and Shad died from lack of oxygen , but they explained it had no effect on game fish, bass, walleye, etc were all unaffected. Which, BTW, I find odd.
While interesting, and cannot be ruled out since I also did not lose any bass, etc, I still would not expect the CC to be the first fish to die from lack of oxygen, or that I should have at least seen some signs such as fish at the surface, etc for clues to any oxygen issues, but I suppose there is some logic that the largest fish in the pond need the most oxygen.....but why would none of the extremely large GP be affected?
Still very confused after such a great run for so long, knew I was bound to have an issue one day, just never expected it to be such a mystery of picking on one species and only one size of them.
Thanks again to all, I appreciate any ideas that come forward, I know it is a difficult problem to even speculate on.
