Lake Biology 101

[RapStaff]

I went out to a small lake west of Edmonton very little pressure if any. It's hooked up to another lake that has fish by a creek channel.

The lake in question has bugs in it and loons swimming.
But seems void of all plant life.
We made a loop around and across found 19 feet of water.
I did not see any baitfish in shallow but saw a bloodsucker and a crap load of what looked like shrimp and some were fluorescent green.

Really weird that a lake that size connected to a fish holding lake would be dead.
Could this be a result of a total winterkill?
Zero plant life and no fish?

Has anyone ever seen this before?
Inquiring minds want to know.

[Drewski Canuck]

Could be many reasons you did not see fish in the shallow lake. 19 feet will overwinter to a great degree, but in a hard winter like 2010, even 25 feet deep lakes died off hard. It may be that the fish are still deep as the lake is "turning over" right now.

Gamuris (I can never spell that word!) is a good sign. Lots of feed, and if there was any migration on the creek channel, the fish that got into it will grow really fast. Biggest issue is whether the creek had enough water for the fish to want to move into the other water body. Odds are it will be fry moving across and you will not see any size for a year or so.

Loons are the give away that there are fish. They don't eat tofu. They eat fish and lots of them. No fish, no reason to stick around, and they move on. The fish may be small, as the loons can't take out anything more than 10ish inch range easily.

Drewski

[RapStaff]

What about the plant life ? Any thoughts in that every other lake I've fished this year has some weed growth starting to emerge.

[Heavy K]

Loons are the give away that there are fish. They don't eat tofu. They eat fish and lots of them. No fish, no reason to stick around, and they move on. The fish may be small, as the loons can't take out anything more than 10ish inch range easily.

Drewski

As DC was sayin', I wouldn't take the presence of loons to mean there's sportfish present. I can think of a few lakes that have resident loons and nothing but minnows.

HK