Addiction kicking in!!

allenray · Post by **allenray** » Sat Jan 10, 2015 5:00 pm

It's below zero outside but fishing is creeping into my thoughts already. The boat show is next week and Iv'e been ordering supplies for the new season. Rolls of fluorocarbon to replace on the reels a new set of back up lights for those dark ramps, a face guard for those cold and rainy mornings, a new heavy duty rain suit, pro 100 packs of craws, brush hawgs and tubes cause I'm tired of running out when you have used up all the lure glue. And something I've never used. Live well treatment G juice and aeration system. No dead fish this year. Now to set up plans to go to Kentucky in March!! The season can't start soon enough for me! Anybody else itchin to go fishin??

brendanc · Post by **brendanc** » Sat Jan 10, 2015 10:38 pm

Hopefully get some ice fishing in soon. Been tying jigs, straightening out tackle, rods, reels equipment. Restocked all the supplies... but still miss standing on the deck of my bass boat for sure!

I've used catch and release formula in the past, always worked very well in really hot weather situations... fish care is super important... nice to get some feedback on G Juice.

allenray · Post by **allenray** » Tue Jan 13, 2015 7:52 pm

I've heard a lot of good things about it. I like the fact that it's a liquid and not a powder. Which I think will work better in the live well. Plus I've put an airater in it also. I lost several fish last year and I don't plan on loosing any this year.

brendanc · Post by **brendanc** » Wed Jan 14, 2015 4:21 pm

Knock wood... Haven't had any issues with my Ranger livewells. I always check on my bass often and run the aerator and fresh water pump on High and sometimes constant depending on the water temps.

On a bit of a side note... In my opinion, I think a lot of people get themselves in a bad situation when they catch bass deep in the summer and then go looking for a shallow bite. The water temps in the middle of the lake can be drastically different from the shallows. So now if you're pumping fresh water into the livewells, the temp is much higher and you can have a problem just from that.

A lot of guys like to freeze bottles of water and keep them in the livewell to keep water temps down, but anyone who has ever owned an aquarium or stocked a pond will tell you you need to give fish time to acclimate to the water temp. If you don't, you can shock the fish. That's why you're supposed to let the bag of water containing the fish sit closed and floating in the water that you intend to introduce the fish into. Then after 10-15 minutes open the bag and allow the water to mix and the fish can swim out on their own.

There's certainly many differing opinions on whether or not adding ice to livewells is a good fish care strategy... We can see the effect of adding ice in the livewell and at the scale, but what happens when these bass are reintroduced back into the hotter lake water? How does that change in temp impact their health?

What are your thoughts in how water temp changes impact bass?

allenray · Post by **allenray** » Thu Jan 15, 2015 5:43 pm

IMO I think it has less to do with the temperature than with stress and oxygen content. I've noticed over the years that if your live well is circulating fresh water in on a constant basis the lake temp and live well temp shouldn't be that far off from each other. But being the fish are stressed after being caught and tend to jump around a lot in the well. I would think the oxygen in the well would get used up faster. Hence dying fish. that's where I think the airater and G juice or similar fish calming additives come in. Now consider you have two limits in the well and they are all stressed out. The oxygen content will be at a minimum. I already had installed a temperature gauge just to see if the well temp and lake temp were off by a lot. They tend to be within a few degrees of each other. That's when I decided to install an airater and start using a calming additive. Because I had lost some fish last season. For no real apparent reason. Because I kept checking the temp in the well I thought they would be ok. I'll see how this season goes and how well my idea works.

brendanc · Post by **brendanc** » Fri Jan 16, 2015 5:47 am

I totally agree that lack of oxygen is #1 and stress is most likely the #2 cause of fish casualty... was trying to focus more on water temp as an isolated variable that people seem to focus on a lot when discussing fish mortality.

Surface water temps (which are read by the typical sonar unit) don't take in to account the water temps at the depths where bass are actually caught. So if you catch a bass out of 30' of water and then stick it in your livewell, they are already are dealing with a a temperature change from the 30" depth temp to surface temp. This causes added stress on bass... so the benefit of having an additive that offers a calming agent most likely increases the chance of bass survival while in a livewell.

All that aside... I think you, I and most, would agree that oxygen is by far the #1 contributing factor which causes bass fatality in livewells. IMO, I think stress is #2 and Temp is probably #3... and then of course there's that other variable of the toxicity level caused by improper cleaning of livewells between tournaments...

There's a lot of opinions out there... would be nice to hear a few others...

Thanks for the info allenray, as always... >/smile.gif" alt="smile" title="smile" height="15" width="15" />