Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Help Looking into why fish have died....

Ok I will put all details i can think of. And sorry for run on sentences and lack of grammar on phone not my computer. But I recently have had a few fish die. I know that's not something that is 100% preventable it happens i get that. The thing that has me concerned is when I preform obtopsy. I was curious to what they have been eating/ potential bird stabbing mark and that is where the red flag happened the stomach contents were none like absolutely nothing. One was lacking so bad the stomach was hard to make out. My 02 levels are 9 or 10 ppm. Going to recheck ph later but always been good. Alkalinity and all levels are optimal. My forage fish is amazing almost too many why I keep checking O2 levels. But there is 100000 plus bluegill ranging from cm to 10.5 inches only size I'm lacking alot of is 4s. The bass found dead have been both male and female. Where I'm located spawn seems to have just ended like this weekend. They are all young fish ( pond is young) all dead fish i would have called anyway all from 11 to 12.5 inches. And thin. It's odd to me due to most of the fish I catch are 115% relative all the way to 143% but 85% of fish are north of 110% RW. My algae is very dense at moment and I did fertilize heavy due to water turkeys camping out and water was way more clear than ever before so I made it a bit tougher on them. Could they just be not eating during spawn or could the water turkeys be running them. It just odd to me I catch a 3lb 1year old fish then have these float on me with empty stomachs and yes I think I have controlled the water turkey issue I read back on old threads here and ran wire every 25 feet seems to help. Except for 1 every once in awhile comes back. All input is appreciated thanks in advance. LMB by the way and bluegill are CNBG and RESF

The annual mortality rate of LMB is higher than most think. If you have a healthy population of BG and LMB at 115% you should be ok. Predator fish dissolve food very quickly and empty stomachs at spawns end are common. LMB lose a lot of weight when spawning often 25% or more.

Thank you for the response. Just had me worried lost 5% of population so far. Also starting last night lost 10 to 15 CNBG all the originals so 8" plus. Luckily the LMB have been the underperformers that i would have been culling anyway. They are way behind the rest of the pack and have never seen the ones that have died before never been caught. I wont lose much sleep as long as one of the big girls don't float up soon.

Asking similar questions as to what one can expect natural mortality to be, Eric introduced me to paper by TPWD of a 17 year study. After attaining lengths >12", the mortality was much lower when in most years ranged between 5 and 10 percent. Eventually, as the fish aged, mortality rates trended higher. It depends entirely on what you want, but natural mortality will be insufficient to produce trophy fish over time. You plan to cull LMB and that will be crucial to success.

On the subject of condition. There were two years in which the average weight of LMB in the study declined. These years were also associated with spikes in mortality. So getting enough to eat is essential for good health and survival.