Three dead fish

[Blyblvrd]

Hi All, I went up to the lake this weekend and saw ~footlong bass (I think) swimming on one fin, sideways on the water. It had something around its mouth but didn't look like fishing gear or guts coming out the mouth. It was alive and I could touch it with oar and it would try to swim deeper but keep floating back up.

We determined there was no gear we could remove and therefore nothing we could do so we paddled on. This was in Ash cove in Moultonborough.

As we were entering Salmon Meadow Cove we saw the same species of fish that was very recently dead, gills wide open and bloated belly. I remarked to my wife "I hope we don't see another one otherwise it's an epidemic".

Famous last words because a hundred yards later we saw a third one with the exact same condition.

We paddled to the house and locked ourselves away expecting a zombie fish apocalypse

Anyone have any thoughts what this might be? There were fishing boats in and out of the cove all day but it was early morning. Possibly catch and release that was killing them??