Strange smell

[410th]

Got a question for you all.

I was the old Stanford lake this past weekend and when I brought in a wad of grass with a spinner bait, the grass had a real bad smell to it, almost like sulfer or rotton eggs. I could smell the grass laying on the front deck with me standing up. Any body got any ideas what would cause it to have a smell that bad.

Billy

[BKGOOCH]

probly that huge landfill just cross the hill

[coombro]

Thats a dish called kimshi

[FlyLie]

Any oil/gas wells in the general area? Could be natural gas (sulphur) coming to the surface; ....talk to BP On the serious side, we have an area on the CR which does this.

[ronzo]

When plants rot they emit a gas called hydrogen sulfided. It smells like rotten eggs.

[IronWorker]

If you had that Japanese guy who caught that big huge world record fish you could have handed him the grass and he would have ate some of it and then told you exactly what the deal was.

[MagikSmallie]

Any oil/gas wells in the general area? Could be natural gas (sulphur) coming to the surface; ....talk to BP On the serious side, we have an area on the CR which does this.

I don't think it could be Natural Gas. Natural Gas is ordorless until they put it in the lines. they add mercaptan (Spelling?) to the gas to give it the odor so leaks can be detected, so if its a natural seep then there would be no smell. However, if its an active line leaking then yes you can get that smell from gas.

My guess would be the Hydrogen Sulfide as suggested above.

[bassin_bug]

Got a question for you all.

I was the old Stanford lake this past weekend and when I brought in a wad of grass with a spinner bait, the grass had a real bad smell to it, almost like sulfer or rotton eggs. I could smell the grass laying on the front deck with me standing up. Any body got any ideas what would cause it to have a smell that bad.

Billy

It is probably methane gas leeching from the landfill. We pass a landfill when we are going to Cherokee Lake. At times we can see what looks like a light cloud of smoke hanging heavily in the air. When we drive through it the air smells like rotten eggs. At night we can see a large, blue flame coming out of a pipe where they are burning off the methane.

Lots of lakes have methane that naturally escapes into the water. I remember seeing what is called a 'lake turnover' and methane was bubbling to the top and smelled the same as you describe. The water looked thick and gross.

[BurleyDog]

When plants rot they emit a gas called hydrogen sulfided. It smells like rotten eggs.

Here is the winner. When something decomposes in a low oxygen environment (like say underwater) the microbes that break it down produce hydrogen sulfide. This is the same smell they put in natural gas so that you can detect a leak.

[MagikSmallie]

The landfill is a possibility but again methane has no smell until mercaptan is added. and when the lake turnsover the smell you have there is the hydrogen sulfide from the rotting vegetation, and its this that I think the smell is coming from.

[MagikSmallie]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercaptan

[creeker]

Were you by yourself or could it have been your partner?