Black Dog Draw down

The black dog power plant is draining their cooling reservoir to the south of the Minnesota river. I stopped by there today and took these pictures

Pic 1 you can see a car being pulled out

how do you suppose that got there?

wow Good pics, I don’t go to the river much but looks like a lot of fish being beached

more pix

My guess is that there were about 100 people down there with garbage bags filling them up with any fish that wiggled

Oooh, that’s gonna stink! I saw a buffalo in one of those pics, otherwise were they mostly carp? Interest to hear what fish species you saw in there.

Did they drain the whole lake. Can’t tell from the picks but it looks like it. I fished the lake by the power plant a lot when I was a kid and we caught a lot of catfish. Would imagine that there would be a lot of them in there also.

You can see at least one decent channel cat in the 2nd pic in the 2nd set of pics, and there is something huge going belly up in one of those pics. What can you do I guess?

Although I hate to see the fish die, I really think it’s cool to see the lake/river bed when they do things like this. And cleaning it up can’t hurt, right? An entire car? Weird that that was just left there.

My old man works for excel energy. He said that something went wrong at the plant that’s why that happened. He said they had to pay some hefty fines for it too

Too bad any sort of fine was probably just a drop in the bucket to Excel Energy. I went down the next day and saw first hand the massive loss of fish. Most of the stuff was dead Carp and Gizzard Shad, but I did see pleanty of gamefish such as Walleye, Sauger, Perch, Sunfish and Crappies. Even seen a few Northerns and LM Bass back there. Wasn’t expecting to see such diversity in that river backwaters. I bet I counted 15 different species of dead fish. Pretty dissapointing, to say the least…

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Too bad any sort of fine was probably just a drop in the bucket to Excel Energy. I went down the next day and saw first hand the massive loss of fish. Most of the stuff was dead Carp and Gizzard Shad, but I did see pleanty of gamefish such as Walleye, Sauger, Perch, Sunfish and Crappies. Even seen a few Northerns and LM Bass back there. Wasn’t expecting to see such diversity in that river backwaters. I bet I counted 15 different species of dead fish. Pretty dissapointing, to say the least…

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If it keeps my energy bill down I am fine with that. The amount of fish are a drop in the bucket to the river and not many people actually fished the lake.

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Too bad any sort of fine was probably just a drop in the bucket to Excel Energy. I went down the next day and saw first hand the massive loss of fish. Most of the stuff was dead Carp and Gizzard Shad, but I did see pleanty of gamefish such as Walleye, Sauger, Perch, Sunfish and Crappies. Even seen a few Northerns and LM Bass back there. Wasn’t expecting to see such diversity in that river backwaters. I bet I counted 15 different species of dead fish. Pretty dissapointing, to say the least…

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If it keeps my energy bill down I am fine with that. The amount of fish are a drop in the bucket to the river and not many people actually fished the lake.

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Oh I doubt your or my energy bills will go down anytime soon.

True, it may have been a drop in the bucket compared to the river. But seeing death on that level is not an every day occurence. You would have to been there and seen it first hand I guess. Good thing there were hundreds of people there to harvest alot of the dying fish trapped in puddles. Still, thousands of fish rotted because of Excels carelessness. They probably got a ten thousand dollar fine that will just be passed on to us.

How do you know it was because of carelessness? How many people actually fish in Blackdog?

As a catch and release guy I don’t like to see a massive kill off, but there are bigger fish to fry, so to speak, when it comes to fish conservation issues.

I guess I’m just partial to this area because its where I learned to fish the river. Kinda my home waters, so to speak. And I do know more than the average person does when it comes to that lake, more than I care to speak about on a public forum.

Maybe it wasn’t carelessness, or maybe it was. Who knows. Its not like they would release info like that anyway. Anyhow, whats the point here again? Oh yeah, we were talking about a massive fish kill, and you said pretty much “who cares”. But I’m used to the closed minded folk like yourself who could care less about a bunch of “roughfish”. Point is this, there was a massive fish kill back there, not only roughfish but gamefish too. Xcel’s fines they pay will be passed off to us and obviously someone was at fault for this, hence the fines to Xcel. Why else would they be fined unless someone messed up? And anyone who had a fleck of conservation in their blood would think of this situation as a very waistful and preventible one.

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I guess I’m just partial to this area because its where I learned to fish the river. Kinda my home waters, so to speak.

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+1 I used to fish there a lot when I grew up. Had a lot of fun times catching catfish and various other fish out of there. I sent xcel customer service a email asking about this will see if I get any response. If I do I will post.

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I guess I’m just partial to this area because its where I learned to fish the river. Kinda my home waters, so to speak. And I do know more than the average person does when it comes to that lake, more than I care to speak about on a public forum.

Maybe it wasn’t carelessness, or maybe it was. Who knows. Its not like they would release info like that anyway. Anyhow, whats the point here again? Oh yeah, we were talking about a massive fish kill, and you said pretty much “who cares”. But I’m used to the closed minded folk like yourself who could care less about a bunch of “roughfish”. Point is this, there was a massive fish kill back there, not only roughfish but gamefish too. Xcel’s fines they pay will be passed off to us and obviously someone was at fault for this, hence the fines to Xcel. Why else would they be fined unless someone messed up? And anyone who had a fleck of conservation in their blood would think of this situation as a very waistful and preventible one.

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Wrong. I never said anything about not caring about rough fish and I assumed there was a good number of gamefish killed as well. I love all fish.

Sorry for your loss.

Well your attitude toward the situation kind of speaks for itself.

Just make sure your catfish buddies dont hear you talking like that. Wouldn’t want you to get shunned for the love of non-gamefish. You would think a fish lover much like yourself would react differently. Not saying this fish kill is the end of the world, but it is sad. Maybe not to you cause its not your turf, but alot of folks had alot of good years fishing for those roughfies and cats back there. And I’m sure they will replunish themselves just fine after a few years of high water. It just sucks seeing it first hand in an area you love, thats all. I have the right to that opinion, and my original post wasn’t meant for you and your downplaying the situation style words. So yeah, I love all kinds of fish too man. And quite frankly, it made me sick to my stomach to see them all rotting. And you know damn well even if it was computer error with the plant, 99% of the time someone is running or managing that machine. Human error caused this kill, no question. So its a lose lose situation. We get stuck paying the fine thru our energy bills, and Blackdog Lake sucks for fishing. Sweet!

I am sure most my cat buddies like rough fish too. Yes it is sad and I didn’t think anyone found a way to fish the lake, so despite my words, I do feel bad for those who lost a unique fishing opportunity. And I also feel bad that it is not going to replenish itself overnight. Maybe as part of the fine they should have had to pay to have a commercial fisherman come in and restock it from the Minnesota, because it will take a good number of floods to get it back.

But you never know, maybe say if a few whities and panfish got back there before everything else, there could be a couple year class of fish that reach big sizes and have extraordinary growth.

When that happens, I will be waiting for your PM to bring me down there to fish.

Seriously, I do feel bad for you since, like I said, you are probably one of the few people who was able to take advantage of this unpressured resource in the cities. And if I was in your shoes, I’d be upset too.

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Well your attitude toward the situation kind of speaks for itself.

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With all due respect, you don’t know Mr. Pug very well.

On the other hand, I feel your pain too Doc. They’re ripping out trees along the shore line of Pool 4 and adding rip rap for apparently no reason.

No fish are being killed and the eagles and other birds will relocate after being there for 80 years.
As popular as that location is, a person would think there would have been a HUGE out cry…but there was only a squeak.

Maybe it was needed, just haven’t heard why.

Back to the point. Pug has a hard time killing a mouse in his house, much less watching needless waste of fish.

I was amazed at how fast the area at Mill Ruins came back after that drawn down to a creek.

Well that was kind of the attitude I presented in the thread. Had I known people fished it consistently, even in the past, I wouldn’t have been so flippant. I always saw it as pretty much in accessible and not worth the effort to fish.

Now if they drained Moore Lake in Fridley I would be pretty ticked, even though I haven’t fished it for year. That and Rice Creek will always be the place the fishing bug was cultivated in me.

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Well that was kind of the attitude I presented in the thread.

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OK, your a bad azz.

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Now if they drained Moore Lake in Fridley I would be pretty ticked, even though I haven’t fished it for year. That and Rice Creek will always be the place the fishing bug was cultivated in me.

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What if they only drained the west side of Moore Lake?

That was the side we hit most as kids. Used to have some decent panfish in there. I also caught a bullhead on that size that would have easily been to big to use legally.

I appreciate the understanding. Maybe got a bit worked up, maybe I took what you were saying the wrong way, I really don’t know. Somewhere along the line this thread became a pointless battle. And your right, the area used to be great before they tightened down security back there and put up all the new “no-no” fences. Just had alot of good years catching some pretty cool species. And to see them all dead was just very un-cool. So hey Pug, didn’t mean to beat up on ya like that. Kinda funny, we have talked before on a different site. One of those disgusting, multi-species roughfishing sites. My name on there is Doc or Dr. Flathead. Peace!

No harm, no foul.

Yeah, I haven’t been over there in a long while. I don’t know why, I like visiting there. I guess it always ends up falling off my radar for one reason or another.

A heads up. Most people know my MO is when I am getting under someone’s skin or they get bent out of shape because of my post, that’s when I put on the gas. For better or worse, that’s the kind of guy I am.

I just click on Pugs Display Name, go to the lower right hand corner and click on “ignore user”.

Hundreds of people do that to me daily.

You cannot stop me. You can only hope to ignore me.

So does that mean you were just trying irritate me then, with no point really to your original post? Just curious, its good to know for future reference…