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O’FALLON, Mo. – Lake Whetsel in Fort Zumwalt Park is being drained during a major renovation. Video of one man’s attempt to help salvage a fish is going viral.

A witness says that the man crawled into the mud to get a huge fish. He eventually got stuck in the muck. He had to get someone to throw him a line to help pull him out.

The lake was created after a dam was built around a spring in the late 1970s. The city says that over the decades it has filled with an excessive amount of silt. This makes the lake shallow and hard to manage.

The city is doing a major renovation of the part this year. That includes draining the lake and removing the fish. O’Fallon is hosting fish salvage events for the public’s to help remove the fish from the lake as it drains.

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