A campaign by biologists to improve fishing in the Horicon Marsh has flooded a lake with dead fish, drawing concern from people living nearby.
“Dead fish. Disgusting. Dead, rotting carcass fish,” Maureen Rogowski said. She lives close to Lake Sinissippi on the Rock River downstream from the 11,000-acre state Horicon Marsh Wildlife Refuge, where the state Department of Natural Resources applied Retenone in January to kill trash fish, particularly carp.
Similar poisoning was conducted upstream at Horicon National Wildlife Refuge.
Thousands of carp have floated to Lake Sinissippi where resident John Moore said he hopes the DNR cleans the accumulation before warm weather encourages rot.
“It’s going to pollute the water. It’s going to make it dangerous for swimming. It’s going to make it objectionable for boating,” Moore said.
In an attempt to clear the problem, state crews used an airboat Monday to break up an ice sheet that was trapping the dead fish.
The poisoning procedure was meant to clear away carp and bullhead, which represented 98 percent of the marsh’s fish population and are bottom-feeders, uprooting aquatic plants and destroying habitat used by other wildlife.
