I was at the Renegade Tourney Saturday night at Nolin and I will have to say that Sherbert Vanmeter and a couple of other guys worked really hard to save some fish. I have never seen someone work as hard as Sherbert to keep these fish alive. Several of which they fizzed, or what ever you want to call it, and seemed to do well at it. After seeing what changes it made in a lot of the fish I started to research it really hard the past few days. There are several really good articles and a couple of studies on fizzing fish. Here are four links on fizzing fish and other information. The best one is the last article because it describes several precautions needed to keep tourney fish alive, not just Fizzing fish.
If you are just catching and release, fun fishing, from what I have read there is NO NEED to fizz a fish, they will return to the depth they need to. The problem is not something that happens in minutes but over several hours. From all of the articles I have read one thing I have learned is it is not the actual air bladder pressurizing that causes the need to Fizz the fish. They swim every day of their lives vertically in the water column with no ill effects from the greater pressure in the air bladder. It is all because they can return to they depth they left. The problem is the STRESS from being in a live well for several hours that makes them too weak and disorainted to return to they depth they need to.
I am going to learn how to fizz fish and think everyone should, but I would be reluctant to use it unless I observed the fish for some time.

Well that is my opinon good or bad right or wrong and hope this helps.


www.mnr.gov.on.ca/MNR/pubs/Fizzing.pdf

www.ladybassangler.com/id28.htm.

http://focusedfishing.com/blog/?p=79

www.leggettscreekbassmasters.com/conservation/Keeping%20Bass%20Alive.pdf



Fizzing Kit can be purchased at

www.iovino.com/fizzkit.htm