One day at Lake Lavon, I was crappie fishing and having a great afternoon. Not another boat around and the weather was perfect with a 2 mph wind.

I was fishing a brush pile near the dam and catching a fish every minute or two. Then, the bite stopped dead. I trolled around the brush pile and the fish were gone! Not even a shad swimming around near me.

I looked in the distance and saw some birds working in the corner of the dam, so I went to see what was schooling to make the birds go nuts. Got up near the shore and saw a bunch of shad dying and swimming in circles. Then, five minutes later, hundreds of shad started to surface and start dying.

Ten mins after that, the big game fish started to surface and roll on their sides. Then a sulfur smell started to appear and the water got a milky green tint to it. You can see it in the video– dead water meets clean water.

Anything trapped in the milky water, dies or was dying.

I ran out to the main lake and filled up my live wells with clean water and ran back to the fishkill. I grabbed all the Black Bass I could find and threw them in the clean water in the live well. I was picking up 5-10 lb bass (50+), 5-40 lb Flathead Catfish (50+), about 50-60 crappie of all sizes (100+).

I would fill the livewell and run them out to the main lake in clean water and released them. As soon as they hit the clean water they took off! I did this for about 2 hours and saved over 200 game fish that would have died.

The carp, buffalo, shad, and channel cats, were on their own. I focused on the fish we all target when we go to the lake.

About 3 hours later the cloud dissipated and some of the fish started to revive themselves.

A big methane bubble from decaying leaves and silt had released from the bottom of the lake in a 500 yard x 500 yard area and almost killed everything it touched. Amazing sight to see. I wish I would have taken video when all the bigger fish started to show. I thought I was videoing them, but the camera was on Photo, not Video……

(Part 1)

(Part 2)