Fish kill in suwuannee fl

barc151

My son and I went to go fishing out of suwuannee fl yesterday. Once past the last marker a beautiful day turned sour. Dead fish floating everywhere, some so thick they were forming weed lines. The fish included grouper, puffers, sea bass, eel, etc.. they were in different stages of decay and none were struggling.

 This extended 1 mile from the last marker to 20 miles out due west. This fish kill was reported to fwc as no red tide has been reported in our county but background levels have been in levy. Fwc said they are working on getting someone out to get an updated sample.

Doc Stressor

They don't do regular monitoring offshore in the Big Bend.  They depend on volunteers to do the sampling which only occurs after the fact.

Butch told me they counted 40-50 breeder-sized redfish floating in around 50 ft of water out of Homosassa yesterday. 

None of this is encouraging. 

barc151

Well Doc it's not looking good for our area right now unfortunately. On another social media site I posted the same info and some have responded by saying they went out yesterday also and observed the same thing from the CK area. We'll have to wait to see what the updated info looks like from FWC. I think I'll be sticking to the river for a while.

MtgMama

Wonder how far off it goes?

MtgMama

Waswanting to go deep off Cr wednesday..

CJFL

I was offshore Sunday out of CK. We saw dead fish floating all the way out to 60 feet. The majority of the floaters we saw were inshore species, such as drum, pinfish and croakers. Keep in mind the wind was coming out of the south all night and previous day which may have pushed all of these fish to the Big Bend area from other areas affected by red tide. We caught gags between 30 and 60 feet and none of the fish we caught had red tide "breath" like I experienced during the last major red tide event. I also did not notice any breathing irritation or eye watering as I'm used to experiencing during a red tide. Not to say there may be some level of K Brevis existent, but we caught plenty of grouper as well as seabass and grunts. 

smh

That stinks.  I was thinking about hitting Seahorse Reef for mackerel here shortly.  Does anyone have any updates from out there?

CJFL

I caught bait at Seahorse reef Sunday morning. Water was clear and we loaded up on Blue Runners and Pins. Another reason why I think all the dead fish floated in from else where. I did see though that the most recent FWC report does show low levels of K Brevis offshore of Levy county. 

ANUMBER1

it's here.

smh

I fished Cedar Key yesterday.  We ran out to Seahorse Reef and caught a bunch of Spanish and several overslot reds as well.  The water was clean, and I didn't see any signs of red tide or dead fish.  Between the reef and Cedar Key, there seemed to be a lot of bait and life around.  

Salty Dawg44

Ran into a few dozen on Monday 9 miles out from Homosassa R-4. They were in an area with a lot of grass, so they may have drifted in.

Slacker

ANUMBER1 said:

it's here.

what did you see?

ANUMBER1

I haven't been out, just some reports from some locals.

Will be covering a lot of area starting the 5th will know more then.

Slacker

Hope you have a great season!

ANUMBER1

Thank you