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Red eye!!

Wayne Laws

Senior Member
Caught from the wandle any idea why or what causes this??
 

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like the answers LOL. No it was not the flash as i have a picture of the other side and I saw it in torchlight.
 
Blood

The Red is Blood. The eye is bleeding from the inside. It will eventually burst and spill out to where it will then heal over (depending on water quality and health of the fish) with a marble effect to where the black pupil will look smashed and disintigrated or it will become infected more seriously. The fish on that side will be blind, as it is now.

The cause could be either low water quality (Chemical input/sewage effluent or a parasite called Diplostomom that enters through the scales into the bloodstream. It swims up to the back of the eye to where it then feeds on the back of the eye and breed. When the eye bursts, the young Diplostimum are released back into the river and the cycle then continues using water snails as the next host. When mature, they leave the snail to where they then use fish as the next host.
It is also thought that wildfowl and especially seagulls peck out the eyes of infected dead fish and the cycle is completed or continued through their droppings back into the river to the next host. Generally, only one infected eye is usually seen, but it is not uncommon to find totally blind barbel in both eyes.
Early signs can be seen by shining a small torch or magnifying glass into the eye to where the Diplostomom white worms can be seen as a reflection of white dots in the black area.
 
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At last LOL!! Wow Ray you really know your stuff! Thanks for such a detailed reply, am i wrong in assuming that , if it is an infection, it is likely to spread?? or can we expect that only the odd fish will give us the red wink!!
 
It can be quite worrying and sometimes disasterous if the water envirornment in which the fish live is rife with the parasite. Usually if the river section has a lot of water snail life, then a good number of fish, especially bottom feeders like barbel may suffer more so. However, barbel can live on totally blind using their barbels (barbules) and underslung mouths to find food and survive. The higher quality of river water, the less you will find them. Again most streams and rivers have sewage or chemical input so you can find these blind fish anywhere although not in great numbers, unless there is a water quality problem with the stream or river etc.
If the parasite attacks the eyes of mid-surface water, sight feeding fish, then they will find it difficult to find food and will die off much quicker due to starvation. In fact complete shoals of fish can be wiped out if the parasite takes hold especially in lakes and ponds.
I was studying this eye problem back in the 1980's/90s and have hundreds of pics of barbel eye problems of different fish from different rivers and have pieced these together like a jigsaw puzzle from the beginings of eye defects to the final blind outcome, if that makes sense.
Another earlier indicator is the cloudy/cataract pupil (black bit) which looks whitish. The whitish is the population of white worms inside the eye.
I am also sure that the parasite has evolved over time (from what is scientifically written) where the bird host has been eliminated from the cycle, hence the bursting of the eye in the water environment.
It is worth paying ongoing attention to the fish you are catching and the stretch you are fishing, as it might be indicating a problem that could get worse.
See below.
b8.JPG
 
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Hi Wayne,

I caught that fish I assume the same one tonight along with a 7lb 5oz and one lost after the snow.

The eye seemed to have a cloudy white area as Ray says as well as being bright red:
 

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