Fishing for Trouble in Wheaton

Snakehead Stalkers Hope to Come Up Empty as They Drain Lake

Maryland officials yesterday began the slow and messy process of draining a lake in Wheaton Regional Park, looking for northern snakehead fish where an angler hooked one Monday.

Pine Lake, a five-acre body that is home to thousands of fish, turtles and other wildlife, will be emptied to its muddy bottom over the next couple of days, officials said.

After the lake is emptied and the fish are removed, workers will look for any adult or baby snakeheads, as well as for the fish's eggs and floating underwater nests.

If there is no sign of the fish, a voracious Asian invader that can breathe air and scoot over land, then the lake will be refilled and restocked.

But if any more snakeheads are found, officials said, they would probably use a chemical poison on the lake -- the same treatment that a Crofton pond got in 2002 after adult and baby snakeheads were found there.

"We will be able to ensure that this lake is snakehead-free," said Derick Berlage, chairman of the Montgomery County Planning Board, which oversees Wheaton Regional Park.

County Executive Douglas M. Duncan (D) said yesterday he'd like to see the whole county free of the predatory fish and pledged to develop executive regulations that would ban the sale and possession of snakeheads in Montgomery.

After the snakehead scare in Crofton, the General Assembly authorized the Department of Natural Resources to ban the importation or possession of certain nonnative species. But the regulations on snakeheads have not been completed, officials said.

Duncan said he considered the snakehead a serious threat but still found it hard to consider with a straight face that a creature out of a science-fiction movie had landed in Montgomery County.

"It eats your picnic lunch. It eats your pets," Duncan said, rhapsodizing on the snakehead's mystique. "And it just keeps moving."

The fish caught Monday was a female that was developing eggs but was not ready for them to be expelled and fertilized, state officials said. "It gives me some confidence that, yes, we've beaten the spawn," which for snakeheads comes in early summer, said Steve Early of the Department of Natural Resources.

Draining the lake will cost the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission about $10,000, about half of which would go for labor costs, Berlage said.

The other $5,000 will pay for the rental of six mechanical pumps, the largest of which are capable of moving 600 gallons of water a minute.

Water will be sucked in by the pumps through a hose that is designed to keep large fish out. Smaller fish and fish eggs could be sucked in, but then filtered out and kept in large bags. Turtles, snakes and other wildlife are expected to leave on their own.

As the water in the lake recedes, officials said, they will use electric shocks to stun the remaining fish. They will be removed and stored in holding tanks temporarily, officials said.

The "electro-fishing" in Pine Lake began yesterday, and officials said it gave them cause for optimism. The fishing turned up eight species of fish, they said, but no more snakeheads like the 19-inch specimen that was hooked by a would-be bass fisherman on Monday.

"To the best of our knowledge, this incident is restricted to a single fish," Early said. Even after the lake is drained, he said, an air-breathing snakehead could theoretically still hide in the mud.

But he said workers would keep an eye out for one flopping in the mud, and rake over the bottom to make certain none was hiding.

If more snakeheads are found, officials said they might resort to rotenone, a milky poison that stops fish from absorbing oxygen from the water. If the pond really is snakehead-free, officials said, a small stream will eventually refill the lake, and it could be restocked for fishing within a few weeks.