Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Help Black pepper flakes in fish flesh

I have a 4-acre pond in Central Ohio 12’ from my back door, which is clean and well maintained. The pond averages between 10’ to 18’ deep, down to an average or 2’ deep in the shallow end. During the past 5 or 6 years my fish have been developing course ground size, black pepper, (looking) spots on the outside of the fish and imbedded in the flesh or meat. This is happening in my bass, blue gill and crappie populations. There are a lot of specks in most all of my fish. My fish appear to be very healthy and act healthy. It is an excellent fishing pond, you will catch fish. If I remember correctly, water visibility is about 4’ – 6’. I scuba dive.

The largest bass in my pond so far weighted 8 lbs 5 ozs. Average bass being 2-1/2 lbs to 3 lbs. We have caught lots of 5 lb bass and I have plenty of pictures to prove it. Crappie are 6” – 9”, largest so far was 16-1/4” My blue gill are all sizes with large ones being as thick as 2”x 4” framing lumber. Silver channel catfish average 7 lbs and do not appear to be infected.

Two years ago I constructed a new smaller pond about 25’ x 60’ x 10’ deep as a silt pit. But I ended up utilizing it as a nursery and stocked it with 1-1/2” Hybrid Blue Gill fingerlings. They are now averaging between 6” – 8” in length. I am feeding them Purina Game Fish Chow. They are also infected with the black pepper spots in them. I have never fed the fish in my larger pond; so the feed should not be a factor.

This new pond is totally separate from my large one; but drains into the large pond. This pond is fed from spring water across the street from my home which flows out of the ground. My neighbor has buried a lot of trash not far from there and I wonder if this could be a factor? Could the ground somehow be leaching some chemical or something into the water and then it gets into my ponds. My brother-in-law says this is caused by bird droppings and not the ground water. Are these fish safe to eat? What do you think? What should I do? Who can I contact for help? Thank you for any help or information you have.

Hi Tim and welcome to Pond Boss. Hold on and one of our fish experts will give you some advice. Sounds to me like a parasite of some sort but that is just 100% intelligence-free speculation, hold on for better information.

Hey Tim --

Welcome to Pond Boss. I'm not a fish expert, but I'm fairly certain I know what the "pepper" is. A photo would help, but more than likely it is just "black spot." These links explain it:

Black Spot Link 1

Black Spot Link 2

Here is a thread from a while back about black spot:

Pondboss Black Spot Thread

Great sounding pond work. Send photos of your pond and fish, and keep coming back.

Ken

Just in case Cat's links don't include this, 1) most fish parasites are harmless to humans, especially after cooking (I trim them out and don't worry about any I may have missed), and 2) stocking some RES to eat snails (and remove that portion of many parasites' life cycle) will likely reduce the incidence of parasites in your fish.

Tim I also had some of these black spots this year as well. And it does mostly come from bird droppings. From the research I have done. It's not a big deal when it comes to parasites and most fish can ward it off if they are healthly enough to begin with. I would think it's not a good idea to have any type of trash on the upside of your ponds. Although that may not have given your fish this parasite I wouldn't let it continue if possible. It could do a lot of other damage to your water if it did get into it somehow.

I've read about these spots before, they are apparently harmless to humans. Were I in your situation, I would stock adult Redear Sunfish to eat snails and break the parasite life cycle, then start putting actual black pepper on your fish before serving it to anyone squeamish.

Has anyone ever cooked fish with the black spot disease? After cooking are the spots still black? The above links should provide all the information that you need.
Below are a couple links from a Google search. Note that how to deal with black spot is different at each DNR site. This is probably due to many of the people using the DNR site are dealing with fish from public waters. The suggestions on PBoss provide a natural means of dealing with the problem in a private water body. Redear sunfish do not commonly occur in MI and MN.

http://www.michigan.gov/dnr/0,1607,7-153-10364_52259_10950-27376--,00.html

http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/fish_diseases/neascus.html

I've eaten fish with black spot since I was a little kid. Many of the tannin colored lakes in Minnesota and Wisconsin had fish with black spot. I was probably 30 years old before I found out they were parasites. I guess they are still black after cooking. I've never paid any attention to them.

Ken

Catmandoo (Ken) is very good testimoney that eating cooked fish with black spot does not harm you. Ken appears perfectly healthy to me when he attends the Pond Boss Conventions. Thanks Ken for the info.

One of the local lakes that I fished when I was a kid had that parasite, and it was most prevalent on Yellow Perch. Now that there seems to be more RES in the lake, I don't see as many black spotted fish as I used to.

Yeah that's why I put 100 RES in my pond in August. Maybe they will help with some of that. I didn't have it bad but had it on some of the fish. I also had a case or 2 of popeye. Be mindfull where you get your forage fish from also if you add any to your pond. You could get some parasites form them as well. All the smaller fish in your pond weather they be BG, RES, minnows, smaller bass, whatever have the potential to catch something from the constant stress they are under from the bigger fish trying to eat them. I figure I would be sick too if I had what looked like a TREX constantly trying to eat me every day!!!

Are you actually using Ken as a barometer for normal?

I was wondering who would be the first one to take the bait!

I tried to hold out as long as I could.

I was going to add to the post above...

Bill, you do realize that Ken has 11 recipes for Giant Sloth and they've been dead for 10,000 years.

But I decided to show some restraint, you know, seeing how it's the holiday season and all.

bad joke after bad joke.

If everyone in this world was as nice a Catmandoo there would be a whole lot fewer problems. We probably wouldn't even need police. However there wouldn't be enough trout and catfish to go around. JC would have to return to again to feed the masses.

Bill, I'm sure there is still plenty of road kill.

Black spots? Hot oil! Call it pepper.

It's actually 12 recipes, but who is counting. The nice thing about these really old recipes is that they work well with many modern species that haven't been dead anywhere near as long as the Giant Sloths.


I'm always up for feeding the masses. Every October, for many years, I helped make a 1000 quarts of Brunswick Stew for the masses. We'd do the same with chili in January. Maybe we could do a Wisconsin Fish Boil at the next PB Convention. I've still got two big cast iron pots, like the one I'm stirring in the photo below, and I still know the secret recipe.

Ken, that is a serious cast iron pot! Looks like the guy to the left of you (in the photo) is using a boat paddle to "stir it up."

See, I wasn't kidding about Ken being a really nice guy. There aren't enough good people around anymore like Ken. Prisons would be empty if everyone was the quality of Ken and his wife. Good job Ken (Catmandoo).

Ok, Ok, I'll admit it, Ken is a great guy, really nice, community oriented, cares about people, blah, blah. That's still not gonna stop me from hassling him (or him from hassling me for that matter).

JHAP - Maybe more dynamite for you at the Pond Boss convention will slow you down. Conference attendees will know what I am referring to.

I have no idea what you're talking about.