Oldsconv,
Not necessarily. With D.O. problems the largest fish go first and many times the smaller fish are able to survive. Your largest fish were largemouths so...
Not sure how far upstate you are but did you recently have a sudden cool down, heavy thunderstorm, or even a hailstorm possibly? If your surface water is tepid it wouldn't take much lower temps to start mixing the water column.
Sounds like a turn over event to me as I've never seen largemouths not able to handle high temps. In fact when someone thinks hot weather has killed their warmwater fish I'm very skeptical.
If it was a turnover event, anoxic (low oxygen) water came up and pretty much wiped out the already moderate oxygen levels that occur in warm water.
If you don't want a repeat I would suggest some diffuser aeration to break up the water column and keep it mixed all summer.
Last edited by Cecil Baird1; 08/25/10 07:31 PM.
