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SG Laqunosal The Big Fish Kill Over 90,000 fish float to surface of lake after ice leaves Lake Scugog in 1960 Itwas a sight that veteran conservation officer Ben Smith will never forget. When he looked across Lake Scugog, just two km. from his Prince Albert home, he saw thousands of dead fish floating on the sur- face of the lake. Conservation officer Ben Smith, in 1958, five years before the big ‘fish kill’ on Lake Scugog in the spring of 1960. Article reproduced from the March/April 1982 issue of Aski magazine, published by the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources. www.focusonscugog.com “We took things in our stride,” Ben re- called, but seeing all those dead fish has to rate as the biggest shock that | had in my 26 years as a conservation officer for the Ministry of Natural Resources. It was April 22, 1960, the day after the lake ice had melted. The first Ben heard of the fish massacre was by an anguished phone call from a native trapper. He hurried down to the lake, pushed his cedar strip boat through clumps of remnant ice and made for the deepest wa- ter where the concentration of dead fish was the heaviest. “The wind was drifting them in to shore” says Ben. “Many of the carp had rotted but the bass looked good enough to eat.” Belly-up in the frigid water were huge muskellunge, some of them 23 kg or more - carp, smallmouth bass and perch. Ben theorized they were all victims of chronic lack of oxygen. From dawn ‘till dusk for the next 14 days, Ben puttered about the 35-km lake h-butt peared in no time and the lake was heavily restocked with bass and muskellunge that Spring. Ben figures that three ice storms, so packed and insulated the snow and ice, that the fish progressively exhausted the underwater air supply before the April 21 thaw. “There are usually cracks in the ice, * Unidentifieg, due to decomposition totting up the dead fish with a pt counter. Over a 7.8-km square area he re- corded more than 92,000 dead fish. But there were survivors. Ben swept nets across the deepest stretch of the shallow man made lake and found 28 lively muskie and thousands of catfish, a species capable of surviving with a low oxygen level. As for the dead ones, they disap- but there weren't any that year,” he said. The spring thaw of 1960 was also a vivid memory for many residents who call Scugog their home, as it was the same year the heavy build-up of ice and snow caused the Port Perry and Cartwright Causeways to remain flooded for almost eight weeks. This photo of th ing ie of dead fish, was taken by conservation officer Ben Smith. ke Scugog was found covered with thousands Focus - May 2007 19