Unfortunately we have quite a bit of experience dealing with major fish kills here in Texas to the point that we have a group of people in TPWD that work on nothing but fish kills. To name a few examples that people are probably familiar with, we had a large bass kill at Sam Rayburn in 1998 due to largemouth bass virus. Toledo Bend experiences striped bass kills often in the summer due to temperature stress. In West Texas there are major die offs nearly every year associated with Golden algae. This is obviously a major problem that fishermen are aware of due to the number of calls we receive concerning sick fish or fish with strange sores on them. Which is good, if you see something or think something is out of place don’t hesitate to call, that’s what we are here for. I thought about writing this article after answering such a call recently, and figured it would be good to go over some things concerning fish health that may be observed while on the water.

Eons ago when I was a lowly freshman at college I remember sitting in my very first wildlife and fisheries course. One of the first things the professor tried to get through to us was the difference between preservation (do not touch) and conservation (touch with care). I was still pretty much a kid at the time, but I distinctly remember thinking that my major was going to be an easy one if so much time was being devoted to such a simple concept as the difference between preservation and conservation when compared to all of the other lessons I was being taught at the time in other courses – this fisheries and wildlife biology thing would be a breeze. Fast forward nearly 20 years later and the difference between preservation and conservation has so much gray area that I wish I would have listened to that man more carefully. I’m going to talk today about animals and plants gone bad, or at least animals and plants that lack manners.

Read more on animails and plants gone bad...