Dying fish in livewell...any suggestions?

[Moveon]

They dang sure won't live floating belly up when released after a tournament because they can't keep themselves upright

That's right! Maybe they die either way. What they need is a way to get back down where the pressure will decompress their swim bladder back to normal size for that depth.

Perhaps some kind of wire cage with a weight on it that has a quick release rope tied to it. You put your fish in the cage and lower it down to the depth where they were caught and then let them acclimate for a whil and then release them. That was what I think would work. But it would be a whole lot of trouble to do.

I read in the In -Fisherman book on Smallmouth Bass about catching deep water winter santurary small mouth bass. It seems that according to that book they congregate together in the deep water holes during the winter months. And a good fisherman who can locate them and catch them could catch a lot of them at that time of the year. But then at that time of the year the water's pretty cold and holds more Dissolved Oxygen. And the cold water and cold air helps to keep the air inside the fish at a lower pressure. Cold air is more dense and takes up less space than warmer air so their swim bladders won't inflate as much in the winter months. But by how much I don't know.

But I've seen some crappie who's eyes bugged out and swim bladders inflated big time after I caught then in 25 ft deep water in the hot summer months. I don't catch that may bass in deep water. But I may start catching more bass now that I have a better map of the lakes I fish. I know a lot of guys that fish for bass in the deep drops and report catching some big ones out of Bluegrass and Otter Pits.

[Duayne]

First, you need to know what your well is capable of. If you have a recirc, great, that helps. But if your well is always bringing in new lake water, you could be wasting your time with many of the tips here if you try to do both. Think about it, you cool your water, you add more O to the H2O then you turn on your pump and it brings in new water and the treated/cooled water exits your overfill.
If your well is set up to bring in fresh, then you need to decide. Do I bring in fresh more often, or do I treat and hold the current tank full. I'd go with the second option. Do what many have said here with the addition of a bubbler and some ammonia blocker and you'll have some frisky fish when you let them go and save on batteryfrom not running the water pump. A bubbler will do two things for you. It will help add oxygen to the water and it will help dissipate carbon dioxide. ammonia is a byproduct of breathing and pissing and it add up to a killer. There are simple formulas you can get at the pet store that will block it and make it harmless. Cooling the water is essential if you want it to hold absorbed oxygen from any source. Salt, or a fish saver formula (that will mostly be salt and cost you 5-10 times as much) helps calm the fish, protect the fish, and also helps the water hold more dissolved oxygen. If you add a bubbler, cool the water and block ammonia. you won't need to recirc or add hydrogen peroxide. You can if you want, but that would be plenty.

Us striper fishermen have been keeping much more delicate bait fish alive in hot summer months for a long time and the principles applied there can be exactly the same for bass with some minor adjustments.

[Triton Tom]

Born2fish,

Don’t feel bad, your not alone. Many tournament bass fishermen are having these same livewell kill problems that your are experiencing now that summer is back, and these livewell kills will get much worse from now through mid September 2012. These are the same livewell problems as last summer. Even the best bass boat aerated livewells and livewell chemicals are failing again to keep your catch alive and that can/will cost you dollars at the weigh-in. This is aggravating because all this stuff you bought to keep the bass alive was suppose to work and eliminate these problems. You believed the infomercials, advertisements and testimonials and you spend your hard earned money for this stuff and now you’re disappointed.

From now on when look in your livewell this summer/next summer and you realize your catch is dead or dying again, you can always look and see what fishery science recommends and does to keep their bass alive even in the hottest summer because they are the real experts, they do the scientific research and publish the scientific white paper.

So shall we venture out of our comfort zone seeking knowledge that’s “out of the box” and see what fisheries scientist have to say about things discussed in this thread, OK? I have nothing against the boat and chemicals manufacturer’s they’re just doing their job and selling products to bass fishermen and making money whether the products work or not, that’s Salesmanship.

Enter the Science:

TPWP, Inland Fisheries Division, San Antonio , TX Publication 6/2011 Oxygenation of Livewells to Improve Survival of Tournament-Caught Bass by Fishery by Biologist Randy Myers and Jason Driscoll
http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/fishboat/fish/didyouknow/inland/livewells.phtml

TPWD, Inland Fisheries Division, San Antonio, TX Publication by Fishery Biologist Randy Myers 6/2011 Oxygen Injection Systems
http://www.slideshare.net/raminlandfish/livewell-oxygen-injection-8773301

TPWD, Inland Fisheries Division, San Antonio, TX Publication by Fishery Biologist Randy Myers AquaInnovations Oxygenator 2-14-2012
http://www.slideshare.net/raminlandfish/the-oxygenator-how-effective-is-it

TPWD, Inland Fisheries Division, San Antonio , TX Publication by Fishery Biologist Randy Myers 2-14-2012 Hydrogen Peroxide - A total of 12 one-hour experiments were conducted with oxygen levels measured every 10 minutes. http://www.slideshare.net/raminlandfish/hydrogen-peroxide-for-bass-boat-livewells

Journal of Fish and Wildlife Management: June 2011, Vol 2. No 1. pp.22-28.Doi:10.3996/092010-JFWM-037: Effectiveness of Livewell Additives on Largemouth Bass Survival http://www.fwspubs.org/doi/full/10.3996/092010-JFWM-037
Results show that the use of livewell water additives, such as salt and ice or their combination, does not significantly reduce tournament-related mortality. Largemouth bass may recover from capture, handling, and livewell confinement stress if water quality is goof (Furimsky et al. 2003: Suski et al. 2004), regardless of livewell additives. Although we did not find significant differences in delayed mortality among the livewell Collectively, these results suggest that the addition of livewell additives does not enhance fish survival following competitive angling events. As a result, we encourage anglers to practice proper fish handling practices as well as maintain good water quality within livewells, as opposed to altering water quality with additives. [GOOD WATER QUALITY – back to Oxygenation of Livewells to Improve Survival of Tournament-Caught Bass by Fishery

Try a Google search – “livewell oxygen injection systems”, there are websites on the net with really good information about livewell water quality and how to keep tournament bass alive in bass boat livewells in the summer tournaments, but you got to click the clicker to get to the information, then you must read it, then practice the new things you learn to be successful – there is no “luck” to keeping bass alive and healthy in your livewell when you know how professionals employed in fish hatcheries transport live bass.

The ‘Lunker Program’ in Athens; biologist in Texas transport large mature bass hundreds of miles on state highways across the Great State of Texas every summer and the fish don’t dye.

Then you must make a personal choice about how much fish care your really willing to provide for your catch - Is this fish really worth the best fish care possible or not? The best care is not free like air for livewell aerators or cheap like 3% Hydrogen Peroxide.

Born2fish ask for suggestions how to keep his fish alive, these suggestions will get your started on the right tract with real scientific facts that will help you provide better tournament bass care.

Who needs “luck and old wives tales” to try and keep your catch alive after you seek and gain fishery knowledge, then you - choose to provide the best fish care possible all day for your catch.

Success is so easy when you know how to be successful. Keep those gills pink Born2fish and collect that prize at the end of the day.

[Astrobass]

I agree with Fishin is Life. I'll always fizz a fish that starts floating on it's side. The worst feeling I ever had was at Green River, there was a a good sized smallmouth floating on it's side and I didn't have a fizzing needle with me. It had been up to the point that it was bleeding and had a sun bleached spot on it's side. I couldn't fizz it, and couldn't save it. Worst feeling in the world by far! Since that day, I put 5 needles in my tackle box so that I'll always have one. The key to fizzing is to make sure that once the fish looses buoyancy, you take the needle out immediately, it'll go down and correct itself. Removing too much is just as bad as not removing enough.

[Triton Tom]

Astrobass-

Hyperpressurization is not the only problem for smallmouth bass caught in night tournaments.

Enter more science again:-Largemouth/Smallmouth Tournament Bass Kills
http://oxyedge-chum.com/largemouth_s...bass_kills.htm

Smallmouth bass do die quicker than Largemouth bass, because of hypoxia, sustained low oxygen saturated environments commonly found in aerated tournament boat livewells containing limits of fish during summer tournaments. A reduced tolerance for hypoxia would therefore largely explain why smallmouth bass are less tolerant of summer tournament procedures than largemouth bass.

Bass tournament kills are much worse in summer night tournament than day tournaments. RE: no photosynthesis at night - environmental water becomes hypoxic - livewell water is hypoxic before you put the first fish in the box - a loose, loose deal for the fish kept in aerated bass boat livewells especially at night.

There are sound reasons why tournament mortality is worse in night C&R tournaments.

[sweetwater]

I've seen fish release weights used while offshore fishing. Is there any reason why they won't work with bass?

[Moveon]

Two things you would have to do to make that work.

1: Make sure you don't drop the fish with the weights into water that's too deep. Like water that's below the thermocline where the oxygen is depleted in the summer time.

2: They would have to be able to release the fish after a while when they get the fish down to the proper depth. Something that would release the fish by dissolving after some short time in the water. Once the fish is acclimated back to the depth they would then be able to go where they want.

This all would be a lot of trouble. It might be expensive but if you really want to save the fish caught during a tournament then it might be better to have a weigh in more frequently or to have a judge in each boat to weight and meaure the fish and then take a pictures before releasing the fish right away.
Fish that are left in the live well after being caught in very deep water > 33 ft deep would still suffer a lot of stress if you held them in the live well all day long.

One thing I did was add a long PVC pipe to the intake out my live well. I weighted one end of the pipe and connected the other end of the pipe to my live well intake hole with some clear tubing that's flexable. I wrapped some tefflon tape around the tubing to make it fit the hole better. I eventually lost the pipe but it worked how I wanted for a while. I could draw water up from the depths into my livewell. That water was 10 to 15 deg F cooler than the surface waters.

But I was fishing in a small lake that only allowed electric trolling motors and not gas engines at that time. I would have lost the pipe much sooner if I were fishing in a lake where I could have used my gas motor. I would have forgot that the pipe was back there and taken off before pulling the pipe out of the water. It would have fallen right off the boat the first time I fired up the motor and took off at full speed.

Perhaps if one could design a pipe that would stay attached when moving by swiveling upwards and then it would drop back down and hang vertically when you slow down.

The key was to draw cooler water up from the 10 ft deeps water. Even five or six feet down in early summer will give you some cooler water for the live well. Cooler or colder water holds more oxygen. Stressed fish need a lot of dissolved oxygen to help them recover from the stress of being caught, stress of having their slime rubbed off and the stress of being kept in the confined space of a live well with the other fish.

If we didn't have so many people fishing for bass these days it would not be necessary to worry about the bass population. There would be a lot more bass in the lake when the fishing pressure is reduced. I grew up in that environment and fished for a week or two at a time when there was very little other boats on the huge lake I was fishing. KY lake.

[Duayne]

Oxygen injection can help to add disolved oxygen to the water. It also takes up more space, can be expensive and carrying around (and probably sitting on) an oxygen tank in a bass boat isn't the safest thing in the world. It also doesn't help with things like carbondioxide removal. I completely disagree with some of the "ads" that say air pumps do not help add disolved oxygen to the water. Will they add 100%? No. Will they add enough? In the right conditions, you bet. Think about it; What do people use to keep closed system aquariums oxygenated? Air pumps. Keeping bait and keeping bass is no different. It's much different if you are over stocking a bait tank or livewell. The key is not to. Doing so creates several head aches besides just oxygen saturation levels. Biology departments do use those systems but they are highly trained and the systems are professionally installed to provide the safest of conditions. They also are set up to be able to over stock and they are trained in how to do this.

For those that wish to go the air pump route:
They have pumps that can supply for two wells off one pump and are pretty easy to install and operate.
Get the better stones that put out the smallest bubbles possible.
Cool your water 5-10 degrees and keep it there. It's a proven fact that the cooler the water, the more it holds disolved oxygen.
Add a small amount of non iodine salt. It helps calm the fish and its also proven that salt water is more dense than fresh water, thus holds more disolved oxygen.
Run your air pump full time when you have fish in the well(s). They don't draw much and the constant bubbles will aid in the removal of carbondioxide.

There are many live bait guides that tried the oxygen systems and they proved to be more trouble than they were worth. Almost all of them now run a simple air pump and they are keeping fish that are much more delicate than bass.