Fisheries biologists at the West Virginia DNR are investigating the cause of a fish kill earlier this week at Tygart Lake. The incident was first noticed on Tuesday when 75 white bass were found dead. Another angler reported 7-8 smallmouth, one dead carp, and a couple of lethargic largemouth bass.
“That does not look like a major situation,” said District Fish Biologist Frank Jernejcic who returned to the lake Thursday to look for any further problems. “The fact that it’s several species and they were found throughout the lake suggests some type of disease situation.”
There are no known diseases among the fish population at Tygart, but Jerenejcic added like any other virus it could have just started.
“Do we have somebody in the family who has a cold or are we going to have an epidemic,” he explained in their approach.
Typically in a fish kill, state officials immediately look for environmental changes or possible outside source pollution which could trigger a die off. There was no evidence of those factors.
“There are no red flags here. There’s no problem with water quality. There have been no changes with the water level in the in-flows or the discharges over the last month, which we monitor daily.” Jernejcic said. “Nothing unusual that would point to any environmental situation, short of the disease. If it is a disease, there’s nothing we can do about it anyway other than maybe identify it.”
Biologists will continue to monitor the lake and any other incidents of dead fish in the days ahead. Jerenecic is still undecided if the situation rises to the level of sending fish away for testing at the federal fisheries laboratory. He said presently, the level of impact isn’t large enough to warrant the study which requires extensive collection and preparation on a large sampling of fish.