BATON ROUGE-  BREC held the Hyacinth Lake Rodeo focusing on removing the invasive water plant. It's a clean up method that’s been used in Baton Rouge once before.

“With a lake or a pond, this water hyacinth just grows like crazy,” said Nathaniel Klumb with Paddle BR.

Water Hyacinth is a beautiful but harmful plant. The invasive species kills fish when it dies taking oxygen out of water.

“Its so thick you cannot use the lake its taking over,” said Gail Dixon with BREC Conservation group.

Saturday eighty volunteers came out to remove the plant and some debris.

Nathaniel Klumb spent hours removing the plants from the Blackwater Conservation Area.

“Its a total of 5-1/2 acres and of that less than two was open water so about two acres was just like this over here an we have not cleared to acres but we have cleared more than what's happen in a while,” said Klumb.

Its been an issue for local lakes before. Back in 2016, the LSU lakes were covered with Hyacinth and clean-up efforts were needed then too.

People who enjoy fishing at this lake are trying to remove as much as possible.

“Most of it had died completely over this cool winter that we had and so what you see is really from the spring, said BREC’S Naturalist, Amanda Takacs.

For now, they are hoping to make this once again a sweet fishing spot.