Trout restocked at Knott Creek Reservoir, site of big fish kill

Scott Sonner

Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2000 | 4:22 a.m.

RENO, Nev. - State wildlife officials are confident a northern Nevada reservoir hit by a massive fish kill will return to its trophy-fishing status within 18 months now that they've restocked it with 7,500 trout.

Warmer than usual water and low oxygen levels were blamed for the death of about 5,500 fish in August at the Knott Creek Reservoir north of Winnemucca. It was the worst die-off there in 30 years.

"We figure we lost 95 percent of the fishery. Very few fish survived," said Chris Healy, a Nevada Division of Wildlife spokesman.

On Monday, workers restocked the reservoir with about 5,000 Tahoe-strain rainbow trout and about 2,500 bow-cuts - a cross between the rainbow and the cutthroat.

The bow-cuts were fingerlings, about 3 inches long, but the rainbows were 11 to 12 inches and should grow to the 17- to 18-inch range by the spring, Healy said Tuesday.

"A year from now, anglers will see some pretty good fishing and by the spring of 2002, the reservoir should be back close to resembling the trophy fishery it was before the fish kill," he said.

The reservoir is known for producing trout in the 2-foot range.

While the unseasonably hot, dry weather contributed to the kill, a stretch of cool, wet weather had caused concern among state wildlife officials that poor road conditions would prevent them from getting to the remote reservoir for restocking before winter set in.

But the weather broke over the past week and the young fish raised at the Mason Valley Hatchery in Yerington were trucked in Monday.

"Had we not been able to get there, we would have had to wait until next spring and they would have lost out on six months of growth," Healy said.

"The temperature was 52 degrees at the shoreline, which is good news," he said.

Water temperatures had climbed into the high 70s this summer, the breaking point for survival of most varieties of trout. At least one of the rainbows killed was 28 inches long.

When full, Knott Creek Reservoir covers about 125 surface acres. At the time of the kill, it was about half that size.

At first, some area residents thought fire retardant dropped from air tankers fighting a wildfire was to blame.

But biologists said the kill at the reservoir high in the Pine Forest Range was mainly a natural occurrence, brought on by above-normal temperatures, a spurt of algae growth, warm water temperatures and low oxygen levels.

"One of the reasons Knott Creek is such a great fishery is there are heavy nutrients and that allows the fish to grow so fast and become so big," Healy said.

"But for the same reason, there can be a summer kill when there is an oxygen deprivation and a die-off of aquatic plants," he said.

"Usually when you see the wind chopping on the water, that is good news because it gets the water moving around and some oxygen is created.

"But it August it was very still, almost windless, and the water temperature got too high."