In the last 3 or 4 days I have lost about 24 large mostly cat fish. The fish are rather large about 20 to 24 inches long. I got up from a nap and I had about 100 turkeys eating from my pond. I turned on my aerator late as I had been sick, last night I lost about 6 fish. Could this be they are laying eggs and getting stressed? I hope not to loose any more fish. Give me input or ask me questions--please.

How long has the aerator been turned off? If it has been most of the winter, you need to start it up slowly over about a week.

How much rain have you gotten latly? Runoff?

I lost all of the catfish out of a smaller pond a few years ago. Do they have any fungus or sores on them?

I have the aerator on now after being down all winter. No sores of any kind and it has not rained for a long time until later today.

Any other fish dead besides catfish ? Any changes lately ? Did you just start up the aerator ?

Deaner,

Sorry for your loss, and I hope it's over with. Just curious, how deep is your pond?

Me too. very sorry to hear it. Seems to be an epidemic this spring. If I remembrer correctly, you have some pretty good sized cats and feed regularly. It mey be time to get the church kids over. There are just so many variables when you think you have it all figured out. Good luck.

I have lost only 3 or 4 bream and the pond is low now and is probably about 5 foot deep. We will check the pond this morning as I onlysee about 2 dead fish and these were from the deeper water and they washed in to shallow water.
I had 11 inches cut off the colon so I do not do any strenous work yet.

Found two more dead cat fish. The bream does not seem to be affected that much. Some of the fish had open areas on the stomach about the size of 50 cent piece. I sure hope this is all of the dead fish. Thanks to all for your posting and help.

That sounds like a turtle or other fish scavenging after it was dead.

I took out 3 more large cat fish that were dead yesterday. They were about 2 foot long weighing about 8 or 10 pounds. These were heavily bloated. I keep thinking this should be it and there will be no more dead fish.

I have had Winterkill morts floating up in onesy-twosies for a month now, deaner.