Keeping fish alive and healthy (in your livewell).

The following link has some good information. I think anyone seriously interested in fish health and competitive fishing should read this and make the effort necessary to keep fish healthy.

http://www.bassfan.com/opinion_article/121...ll#.Wchc758XbqA

If you are like me and are interested in getting into competitive fishing this is even more important. Beyond the fact that we all need to keep or fish healthy if we want a healthy fishery there is more at stake. When we fish a tournament we are representing our sport, we want to show the public how much we care about fish health and the best way to do that is to show them how healthy the fish we release are. If the public sees tournaments as harming fish they will not support such events. Everyone loves to see big fish, no one wants to see dead or dying fish.

Further from a competitive standpoint, in most competitions a dead fish cannot be culled, if you have a dead or dying fish in you cannot by the cull that fish. Sometimes it just sucks when you gill hook a fish, but those are the breaks.

I hope we all learn something from this, I know that I personally learned the hard way that fish care is of utmost importance. I now take the time to keep my fish as healthy as possible throughout the day. I still have a lot to learn, keeping my fish healthy is now as much if not more of a priority to me as catching them.

Good Read

Very good read Seb.
I always forget about the importance of ice and cool water.
Thanks for sharing.

Even though I don't ever put fish in the live well as I don't keep any or fish tournaments, I learned a lot from reading this which will then allow me to educate my friends who do keep fish or fish in tournaments.

Thanks for posting this

One question I have though that wasn't really touched is on the ice with culling.
If you put 8ce in the live well your fish are slowly getting accustomed to the cooler water but when u cull a fish and have to throw one in to the warmer lake from the cooler livewell does it not send the fish into shock?

Ice doesn't drop the water temp by a large margin. Most don't realize that livewell temps rise much higher than outside water temp quickly unless they are getting recycled with outside water quickly, so ice doesn't make the water ice cold, but does drop it several degrees.

Think of diving in a lake, when you dive down a few feet the water is much cooler, this is the temp that we are trying to maintain.

You don't need to make ice from lake water, it is a myth that ice contains chlorine. In addition using livewell additive will negate chlorine. If it is a big concern, you can do as the article suggests and use bottles of frozen water so no water mixes.

Sabby . What ever u did to your fish on Saturday is what I'm going to do from now on.
Man those things were lively lol

I think Sabby is running a Ranger.. I know I've been pumping the tires on how well a Ranger is built etc. Since I bought mine the fish are much happier in the live well, I've almost lost 2 fish this summer from them jumping out of the box as soon as you open the lid. Like Sabby said adding some live well management treatment helps big time! My old boat I was always babysitting the fish to the point where one of us wasn't fishing. All the tricks mentioned above help as well... keeping water fresh is the main thing.

I had a friend a couple summers ago forget he had 5 bags of ice in his livewell and just threw a fish in the well and keep fishing. When he went back to check on the fish 30 mins later the fish was pretty much frozen solid. I know it sounds crazy but the fish was just fine after the water warmed up. The fish probably thought it was winter out of now where...he said it was swimming reallly slow.. he had pics of it I'll see if he can send them to me.

I used some ice throughout the day, some livewell additive in the morning and changed out the water in the well two times throughout the day. If I actually had a decent bag I would have changed the water more often as more weight in the well equals more fish waste throughout the day. I'm really not an expert on the subject but since my first boat I've been trying to get better at fish management, sometimes it is a pain to lose fishing time, but at the end of the day if the fish don't survive what is the point?