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Proctor Lake Fathers Day Weekend -PLEASE READ!! DEAD FISH EVERYWHERE

3K views 5 replies 4 participants last post by  dgholmes59 
#1 ·
well, Friday me and my cousin and my uncle loaded up and went out to catch a few fish. had probably 250 gills and planned on doing some jugs, trotlines, and rod and reel through the night. well even with ice and aerater(sp) the gills were not staying alive well at all, so we cut a few, used a few, and made chum with the rest and used some bass minnows on some jugs and caught soem shad sunday morning and used them too..did well on eaters..caught about 35 channels 2-7 lbs and a 27" hybrid on rod and reel. aside from the hybrid we only caught 4 channels on rods, even with a ton of chum...just were not biting where we were. Didnt catch a single thing on trotline and didnt even rebait it after the poor show from the first night..plus it was on the other side of the lake and took forever to get over there in the 14" john boat lol. thats how the fishing went....

On another note...the lake has a serious problem going on right now and i do not know what it is. We saw THOUSANDS of dead drum and sand bass, and a lot of big hybrid, all over the lake and washed up on the banks. every ten feet there was a fish and on the opposite side of the lake they were literally stacked on top of each other. didnt see any black bass, crappie, or channel cats floating or banked but it was unbelievable the number of fish out there. The drum are one thing but sunday we were watching our rods and i saw something out by the no wake buoy floating..thought it was a giant carp...got a lil clsoer and realized it was a giant flathead. we watched it for awhile and when it got a lil closer we cast out and snagged it and pulled it in to see how big this monster was. 52" long and it broke the bottom out of our scales, im betting the fish weighed 50-65 lbs very very wide and round, and 11" from the ground to to the top of its back.(not the top of its dorsal..its actual back.it looked like it had been ouut maybe a half a day. i didnt get a girth measurement and realized it after we had left. Now this fish could have been on a jug or something or hit by a boat....yeah right..but if whatever is killing all these drum is killin awesome fish like this then the whole lake is in danger...hell, if it is killing a 50 lb fish, i wonder how it would effect a 50 lb child after spending a weekend off in it..that may be a drastic analogy but something is definantly wrong with this lake. hindsight is 20/20 but i wonder if i should have gotten the game warden to see about getting somebody to autopsy this fish? maybe im over reacting but i have never seen so many dead fish in my life and soemthing is going to have to be done if it isnt too late already. several people had said it was because of pesticides and run off from all the peanut fields by the lake, some have said it was because of the temperature change from the recent raisn we have gotten, but the lake has only rose maybe a foot if that, and we havent had much rain at all.i have no clue...

Anybody else have any idea what could be going on around here??????
 
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#2 ·
Sounds like the Golden Algea kill we had on Whitney a couple yrs ago. But wrong time of year. The game wardens already know about it, it has been a topic on the TFF for several days now. Go ahead and call and inform your local warden about it though. They will take it from there plus will usually inform you what it is.
 
#4 ·
yeah im sure they do know lol as thick as the wardens are out there :smile2:
its hocking to see that many though, no matter what the reason..is there a way to get rid of the algea?
 
#5 ·
#6 ·
I heard a rumor yesterday that made sense because this did not start until after the big rain they had over there. Supposidely one of the pecan orchards used an illegal pesticide and it washed in the lake during the rain. The person also told me they are in pretty bad trouble over it. Fishing was so good prior to the rain and hasn't been good since.
 
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