Stayin Alive, Stayin Alive!!!

I want more than anything to keep the keeper bass in our lakes alive, and live through stress and what not. I spend countless hours a year working with fish who are losing composure, trying to get the O2 they need to swim off, let's face it, crap happens, but we can do something about some of it. I am wondering if anyone knows anything else we can do to keep fish alive, any idas for tourneys, or what not. We all want the fish to stay alive to grow larger someday and be caught again, and to better our kill ratio.
I am devoting myself to anything anyone has to offer on Ky and Barkley Lakes, anytime any where, I will be there to do whatever it take to keep those fish alive, just let me know. After seeing three 5 lbers, a 6.89, and a 3.80- die in two weeks, I am begging for a way to keep these fish alive. Let me know. And let's keep our monsters with us for as long as we can.
Take Care.

You could start a campain to make oxygen injection mandatory in all tournament bass boat live wells. That would help. Good luck with that one. Just the stress of being caught, and put in a livewell while the boat bounces around the lake all day is enough to kill a fairly high percentage even though they may swim off after the tournament only to die later. (Proven fact this happens).

IMO, larger livewells in boats will help tremendously. I don't have your typical "Bass" Boat for I have a Tracker Deep V 17 that is really made for Walleye or Striper fishing but I Bass fish more than anything. The front livewell is 54" long. I have been in several "Bass" boats, Ranger, Triton, Champion etc and wonder why can't the back livewell in these boats stretch from one side to the other. Yes, some storage room will have to be given up but what is more important storage or the fish. Mine has a divider that easiliy allows me to keep one limit on one side and another limit on the other in case I have a partner in the boat the fish can be seperated. My thoughts is giving the fish room to swim a bit should help them after being caught to release some stress plus with so much water, there will be more room for error on the O2 situation. I have caught 2 different 6 lb smallies that I had in the livewell (seperate times) and considered keeping them for over an hour to mount, until I came to my senses. One was last December when the water was cooler so really no good test, but the other was at Cumberland in June, 75 degree water, and she swam away, jumped out of my hands, after releasing her. She had no problems at all and was in very good health even after over an hour in my livewell with that water temp and no additives to the water. Again, room to rome in the livewell, I think helps.

Tight Lines

Ways to keep fish alive.

Release them immediately after catching them.
Never touch or remove the slime that covers the fish's body
Never touch or put anything inside the gill cover. This means never stick a weigh scales hook inside the gill covers. I saw a nice 6.2lb Largemouth bass taken out of a small 90 acre lake that died in the live well due to hot water and no oxygen an the stress of being captured early in the morning and kept in the live well until 2:45PM.

Never keep the fish out of the water for more than 30 seconds.
Holding a fish out of the water is equivalent to someone putting a plastic bag over your head. Both create a lot of stress.

Don't bank the fish into the boat or into anything when pulling the fish into the boat.

Lip the fish and if you have to weigh the fish use the fish's lips to hook the fish to the scales.

Get a bigger livewell.

Refresh the live well water so that ammonia levels don't build up in the water. Nitrates also can build up to high levels. So dump out old water and replace with fresh water.

Bring new water into the boat from below the surface. Take a 10ft long by 1/2" ID pvc pipe and fix it to the water intake of your bass boat. This will let you ##### in cooler water from 10 ft deep below the lakes surface. I use flexible connections to allow the pipe to hang vertically below my boat. Soft vinyl tubing can be used to attach a 90 deg pipe elbow to the boats intake.

Put new oxygen into the live well. Keep the livewell water cold. Insulated live wells help. Freeze water in plastic containers and take to the lake with you. Put the frozen container of water into the livewell to cool the water down. cold water holds much more oxygen than hot water.

Fish caught in deep water during the hot summer months may die no matter what you do. This is where most big fish get the death sentence. A fish caught in 33 ft of water is under 2 atm of pressure. 1 atm of water pressure and 1 atm of air pressure combined. When you remove the fish from the deep water you take off 1 atm of water pressure from the fish's body and gas that is dissolved in the fish's blood will outgas into the blood vessels giving the fish gas bubbles in his blood stream. Also the gas bladder will double in size. The volume is increased due to the fact that pressure is reduced. The number of gas molecules stays the same but they will occupy double the volume. Als the increase in temp at the surface will further increase the volume of the gas bladder. Charles law. With a increase in temp the volume will increase too. So you not only decrease the pressure on the fish but you increase the temp of the fish's body too. The fish must be returned to cold water under 1 amt of water pressure to recover. This must be done asap in order for the fish to survive. The only way to do this is to drop the fish back down to the depth is was caught ASAP. So far I don't know of anyway to do this without hooking a lead weight to the fish and dropping it back into the water at a depth of where it was caught. (Given the fish was caught near the bottom at that depth)

Best thing to do is keep and eat the fish if they even look like they are not strong enough to swim back down to deep water on their own.

Some people suggest using a hypodermic needle to pop the air bladder but I do NOT recommend this. A fish's air bladder should never be stuck. This not only put's a hole in the air bladder but it introduces bacteria deep into the fish's body where they can later multiply and kill the fish at a later time. I could be wrong and maybe the fish have a better immune system that can destroy a few bacteria. But I doubt that. Bacteria can double in number ever 20 minutes under ideal growing conditions and it would only take a few days for the fish to die of a bacterial infection. Mean while the fishermen thinks the fish survived.

Note: not all dead fish stay on the surface where we can see them. Decomposition produces gases in the warm months which can make a fish float to the surface but after a few days the fish may sink back to the bottom or become turtle food.

Regards,

Moose1am

Release them quickly instead of dragging them around all day for a weigh in. Tournaments should not be held when the water gets too warm.

kc