After reporting in my last column about how parasites were being found in walleye on a couple of Maumee River walleye run Facebook sites I follow, I decided to delve into it further by asking fisheries experts if other spawning runs, such as for white bass or other species in general, could be affected as well.
They’re out there, they said, which we already knew, but there is much, much more.
“Yes, they could be susceptible to similar parasitic infections,” said Kyle Leachman, an ODNR Division of Wildlife hatchery biologist, in an email to me. “Fish that are stressed or injured are more susceptible to disease [viral, bacterial, parasitic]. The fish are running in the river to spawn, and spawning season is a very stressful, energy-intensive process. Their immune systems aren’t typically operating at max capacity during this time of the year, which makes them vulnerable to infection.”…