Mark Taylor

Mark Taylor's Outdoors column and notebook appears regularly in The Roanoke Times.

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• Matching May's hatch
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When fisheries biologist Scott Smith recently began receiving reports of sick and dead smallmouth bass on the James River, he was surprised about only one thing.

"It's about a month earlier than it has normally been happening on the James and Shenandoah systems," said Smith, the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries' lead biologist on the upper James.

The kill itself was no shock.

"I expected it," Smith said. "Whatever caused it last year is still there."

And while fishermen and other concerned citizens have plenty of theories, scientists still haven't been able to pinpoint the problem.

"It's frustrating," Smith said. "Every time you find out a new fact, it kind of turns you back to square one."

Kills have been occurring on the Shenandoah system since 2004, at varying levels of severity.

Last year was the first kill on the James and its Cowpasture tributary.

Fishermen started finding sick and dead fish in April. The problem persisted into June, then abated, following the pattern seen on the Shenandoah and one that hints that fish may be particularly vulnerable during the already stressful spawning season.

So far this year Smith has received multiple reports of dead fish near Glasgow on the James in Rockbridge County, and also scattered reports of fish covered with lesions farther up the river near Springwood in Botetourt County.

One angler sent Smith a picture of a sick fish he caught.

The kills aren't like normal kills, Smith said.

Many kills can be traced to what scientists call point source pollution -- something bad entering the water from a single source. That's clearly not the case here.

If the problem were a disease or virus, it would likely be more widespread.

That leaves the scientists trying to pinpoint a chemical or a combination of chemicals entering the rivers and causing the problems.

Water quality tests have looked at levels of ammonia and a number of specific nutrients and organic compounds but haven't found anything at levels that normally would kill fish.

Smith said it's possible that a number of chemicals are working together, kind of like a poisonous soup.

Why is it so hard to identify the target?

Smith pointed out that scientists have to test water for each specific chemical.

"You can't just put a water sample in a machine and say, 'Tell me what's in there,' " he said. "Looking for non-point source contaminants gets to be really complicated and really expensive because the list of compounds out there to look for is a couple hundred chemicals long."

Among the experts working on the problem are scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Cornell and Virginia Tech.

On fish collected by sampling teams, researchers have found signs of bacterial infection, parasites in large numbers, and gill, liver and kidney damage.

It's not all doom and gloom.

Last fall the DGIF conducted extensive population sampling on the James and the results were encouraging, as they were on the Shenandoah system. The population levels of smallmouth bass, rock bass and redbreast sunfish were all strong.

A successful spawning class on the James -- which was surprising to Smith because success is typically poor in years of low river levels -- helped boost the numbers. Still, Smith said he felt mortality related to the kill was no more than 10 or 15 percent.

One number that was down was the number of fish over 11 inches in the far upper reaches of the river, above Lynchburg. So Smith wonders if larger bass might have been disproportionately impacted.

Because so few trophy fish exist in a fishery to begin with, even a 10-percent mortality rate will become apparent in just a couple of years.

Yet another statistic might provide some relief from that fear, at least for now.

In 2007 the James River produced 71 citations for smallmouth bass at least 20 inches long or weighing at least 5 pounds. In 2006, the river produced only 43 citations.

The Virginia Fish Kill Task Force, which was formed in response to the problems on the Shenandoah, has a busy slate of plans for this year.

Among other things, a team from James Madison University will be measuring pesticides, organic compounds and heavy metals in storm runoff, while the DEQ and USGS will use passive devices to measure organic compounds that aren't normally detected by traditional testing methods.

Scientists with Virginia Tech and the USGS will also continue to look at sick fish to evaluate blood chemistry, parasites, tissue contaminants and the fishes' organs.

"We've got what we think is a good plan in place," said the DEQ's Don Kain, one of the lead scientists on the project.

Fishermen and other river users can also help by reporting sightings of sick or dead fish to the DEQ at (800) 592-5482 or at fishreports@deq.virginia.gov.

"Pictures always help," Kain said.

While some fishermen might be tempted to avoid the affected rivers during the spring, Smith said it wasn't necessary. For one thing, no connection has been made to link the kills to health problems in humans.

And fishing pressure likely won't cause undue stress on the sick fish, which likely won't bite if they are too sick.

"Angling could be an additional stressor, but I really don't think it matters," Smith said. "It's kind of like the fish's fate is already decided whether people are out there fishing for them or not."