Lake Wichita Fish Kill Pandemic Mystery

This morning my bike rolled me to Lake Wichita. Perfect temperature with a bit too much wind. That is Mount Wichita you see above, in the upper right part of the photo.

In the lower right part of the photo that is a couple dead fish you are seeing. At the point on the Circle Trail when the trail gets closest to the lake I looked down and saw a dead fish, then another, then another.

And so I stopped for a closer look.

From where I stood on the bank of Lake Wichita, in addition to those dead fish, which you are able to see in the photo, I counted a total of 17 formerly living fish. The fish did not appear to have been dead long, as no noticeable decomposition had taken place, with no tell tale foul odor.

There are not many locations along the trail where you get an up close look at the lake. Right by Mount Wichita is one open beach location, but I was not looking for dead fish when I was at that location.

After leaving the site of the 17 fish massacre, when I got to the next point on the Circle Trail where I had a good view of the lake edge I figured if this dying fish problem was pandemic I would see more dead fish at that location.

When the trail on top of the dam gets to the location of the floating dock one gets a good look at the lake's edge.

I saw two dead fish at that location.

And then I figured, what with water falling over the spillway, a rare occurrence, there should be dead fish caught in the reeds in the creek below the spillway.

I saw several more dead fish when I rolled on by the below spillway location, along with a man and woman, of the married couple sort, pointing and staring, I assume at the dead fish, as I don't know what else would have been getting their attention at that location.

Upon my return to civilization, and mentioning the dead fish, one of my local facticians (made up word) told me he had read that there was concern about an algae bloom on Lake Wichita presenting a potential problem of the killing fish sort.

I saw several people fishing at Lake Wichita today. I don't know if I would want to be catching fish from a lake which is killing fish due to the water quality.

Rolling In Fort Worth's Gateway Park Getting Splashed By Big Trinity River Fish

No. That is not pea soup you are looking at in the picture. Although pea soup does sound real good, even on this not too chilly 2nd day of October.

The pea soup colored water you are looking at in the picture is the some of the pristine water that flows in the Trinity River as it passes past Fort Worth's Gateway Park.

When I stopped my wheels from rolling over the Gateway Park mountain bike trails today and looked over the cliff at the river, I was startled to see a BIG fish jump out of the water, making a BIG splash.

If I were looking at a river in Washington, like the Skagit or the Columbia, I would have thought I'd seen a BIG salmon make a BIG jump.

I then saw several other big fish, submerged barely below the green surface, like the one I zoomed in on above.

I have no idea what species of fish these were, except for being fairly certain they were not salmon.

I had myself a really fine time biking today.

And then I got back to my computer to learn there is a scandal a-brewing.

It always takes me awhile to figure out what is scandalous about a particular scandal when one begins a-brewing. I do not think this particular scandal will take me as long to figure out as it took me to figure out what was scandalous about the Watergate scandal when I learned about that scandal in grade school....