Smelling dead fish at this Scottsdale park? Here's why

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. - If you've been out to Chaparral Park in Scottsdale, it's hard to miss the smell of dead fish.

The city of Scottsdale is calling it a "large population fish kill" and says it happens around this time every year.

"If you come to a park, you want to breathe fresh air, not stinky air," Rosa Malave said.

The stinky air Scottsdale residents are referring to is the smell of dead fish in the lake at Chaparral Park.

"It's just not a pleasant smell you want to walk by when you're at a park. When you're at a park, you want to smell the trees and the good atmosphere, so it's just an unpleasant smell," Brigette Tait said.

Ben Martinez agrees, saying, "It's a little turn off-ish, but after a while, you're on the other side, and you don't pick it up anymore."

Scottsdale says the temperature, cloud cover, algae blooms and runoff can all contribute to fish dying.

Phil Herskowitz, operations supervisor for the park, says there are two more factors.

"They could have recently just stocked and some of the fish are injured in transit. That causes some of our die off. The other one is a lot of people catch and release with all the great intentions of keeping the fish in the lake, and sometimes they suffered damages that they just cannot recover from," he explained.

The lake is stocked with 800 to 1,000 pounds of fish every two weeks between late September until April.

Catfish are transported from Arkansas and rainbow trout are from fisheries up north.

As for the dead fish in the lake, Herskowitz says they have a crew who clean it out on occasion.

"It's an urban fishing lake, so we're not cleaning that often. It's just when we had a die out. Yesterday we took 6 to 8 out ourselves," he said.

Why doesn't the die off doesn't happen in the summer? The city says they avoid filling the ponds during those months to prevent that from happening.