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 It wasn't his imagination.
By 4 p.m., the pond was dry, transformed into a mudhole populated with dying carp, catfish and blue gill.
"I've been fishing here since I was 15 years old," Evans said as he looked at a large carp flopping on the soggy ground. "This is terrible."
The water, along with hundreds of fish, disappeared through a broken dam at the northwest side of the pond. It appears the wood either became so rotten that it could no longer hold back water, or someone broke the boards sealing the culvert.
"Our first impulse is vandalism," Dan VanDyke, a fish biologist with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, told the Mail Tribune newspaper. "It could be equipment failure, but if someone was seen removing boards from the site we would like to know about it."
The pond measures more than 3 acres and is used to irrigate the wilderness area, said Denman Wildlife Area assistant manager Dan Eldridge.
VanDyke and Eldridge repaired the dam with newly cut boards, but the damage was done.
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 "This pond is important because it services our ditches around here," Eldridge said. "It should fill back up in a few days from the ditches above it."
Eldridge worried about the water holes downstream, which rely on fresh water draining in from the affected pond. Those ponds could see fish deaths if the water does not receive enough dissolved oxygen. It seemed many of the fish funneled into the culvert managed to survive the trip downstream, VanDyke said.
"I saw some of the larger fish swimming downstream," he added. "The silver lining we have here is many of the warm-water species have high reproductive rates and can come back quickly."
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Information from: Mail Tribune, http://www.mailtribune.com/
[Associated
Press]
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