"bends mender" bass fizzing needle

[elnutsmalljaws]

You can get them at The One Stop in Celina TN or at Punisherlures.com.

[tracy]

I've had to bleed several fish when I was fishing stren out west. usually you only need to do this if U catch them under 25 feet deep. If your not sure if you need to bleed a fish throw him in the live well check back about 20 Min's if he is swimming around belly up then you need to bleed him. But be careful doing so if you could kill your catch.

before sticking him with a needle open his mouth and see if the air bladder is coming out his throat. if it is then stick the needle in the air bladder there. But you can't always see the bladder from there.

[offdtop]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2etof7_x8NE

This is the best video I have found for "fizzing" by Doug Hannon, pay attention to how the three diffrerent fish are acting showing 2 different fish that need "fizzed", on is a floater the other is having to swim just to stay down.

Fish do not have to be caught from extreme depths to be affected, Myers notes. "One study found that hyperbuoyancy signs could be seen when fish were caught from as shallow as 11.5 feet," he says. "My experience is that fish caught from more than 20 feet deep will show some signs." - this is a quote from a fish biologist

The hyperbuoyancy can occur depending on the nature of the fish if it is one of the fish that primarily lives shallow (10-12ft or less) the inflation of the bladder can occur although not as extreme as a 20 or 30 ft fish but you will notice it swimming "nose down" this doesn't mean you would have to "fizz" the fish, but worth keeping an eye on. And as mentioned sometimes the bladder will protrude the mouth in an extreme case but not always in a lesser extreme, the fish I had degassed for one of our anglers wasn't like that yet he floated on his side for at least 45 minutes till we fizzed him - 5 minutes later he was great and swam off with absolutely no problems.

Guys I waded out to waist high deep water to get this fish where he was floating in order to mend him at our tourney, I was on a mission to have a good release rate and there were 4 of us working this fish and then 2 other guys from another club helped as well, so when you see 6 guys supplying ice, "fizzing" needles, thermometers, additives and transporting water from the lake all to revive one 4lb fish I find it hard to swallow when someone bad mouths "all" tournament fishermen - we are not all like that and two diffrerent clubs gathered to help this one fish - it may seem extreme but the other club kept telling us "your doing the right thing we gotta save these fish" it hightens the awareness for conservation.

[walkeraviator]

Ecellent video man... thanks for that post.