Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Just found a strange dead fish in my little pond

I was planting some things around my small ornamental pond a little while ago & saw a small dead fish floating. It's an odd color, sort of tan & brown. All of my regular fish are present & accounted for & much much larger than that one so I have no idea where it came from or why it died. I'm sure it hasn't been there before now or I'd have seen it. It's about 4" long. So not a teeny baby. ??? Any ideas?

I'm kinda freaked out. lol As always, your help & advice is greatly appreciated.

Post a pic?

Thanks, here's a pic. Took me a while to figure out how to post the link.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1N7bMFeCMKCp_UqYhaTa3XJDnIptxp9DJ/view?usp=sharing

From the pic of the partially decomposed fish, I think it is likely one that was hatched in the pond. To me it looks more like a goldfish compared to much of anything else. Notice the elongated dorsal fin. You have any goldfish in the pond? Some offspring from goldfish are drab colored.

Hi and thanks for your reply. Yes, I have goldfish in the pond, nothing else. I'm constantly checking on the pond & looking at the fish & don't see how this one got as big as it did without me seeing it. The water is clear. But it has a rock bottom & sides & the fish would have blended in I guess. Still...

Also sorta worried about why it died. I checked the pH this afternoon & it was okay. The other fish seem fine. I've had them since right after the pond was built last May & have stopped feeding them since the water temp dropped below 50 most of the time as advised.

Sometimes 1-2 dead fish show up for no apparent reason, perhaps more often in the cold months. If there aren't a whole bunch of corpses, I wouldn't worry too much.

Thanks for your reply. What has me stymied is that this is not one of my known fish. It's much smaller although not a baby. I spend way too much time observing the pond lol & have never seen this fish before. I guess as Bill Cody said it must have been hatched in the pond & somehow I didn't see it. Now I'm wondering if there are more strangers in there. Not sure how much my son spent having the pond built for me as a Mother's Day present but it's provided so much enjoyment I know it was money well spent.

This may be a stretch, but I have seed herons (Blue Herons) get spooked and spit out fish on two occasions. They must have been feeding on the fish in the creek behind my house when I popped over the bank and frightened them. Once in flight, the bird spit out the fish they were getting ready to swallow. I have also seen snakes do the same thing in mid-swallow when confronted.

I've found part of a gar skeleton in the area near my pond. There aren't any gar in the pond so I figure a heron dumped it there.

Most birds, including Herons that eat/catch living things eat their prey whole. Herons wouldn't fly around with a fish carcass or skeleton.

Hawks/eagles/owls will pick at things that they've caught and killed, but anything that they can swallow whole they will. I've seen screetch owls suck down a whole mouse, how they do that I have no idea. But Herons don't have a beak to tear food, so they swallow what they catch whole.