Hey everyone,
I'm looking for some advice,
I am having a problem with fish deaths in my livewells,
To give you some background, I am from South Africa our waters may not be as clean as you have them in the states but we have 50 boats on the water and none of them are experencing this problem on the scale I have.
I have a Skeeter, which is two seperate livewells, Spray bars and Oxygenators.
I fill up my one well when I get my first fish, and fill up the second when I have my 3rd fish,
I have spray bar on auto every few minutes, and I also pump in new water on auto at the same time.
This is mainly happening at one dam where one side of it is Gin Clear and the other at the moment has a thick green slime from hyacinth.
I had this problem in the left hand well and not the right to begin with, I'd check my fish every 30minutes and one interval to the next all 3 of them would be dead belly up, sometimes already stiff, at first I thought this was after I run to a spot which takes me 20/30 min.
However I cleaned my leftwell throughly with Miltons ( used to clean babies bottles ) as it was recommended and had not been back to that dam in a while, I never really had problems for the past two months, However this past weekend I did go back to that dam for a competition and I had the very same thing happen in the other live well. All three dead after a run. The other two fish the other side absolutely fine.
I am catching most of my fish in the shallows but I honestly cannot work out what is going wrong.
I've now been told to wash my livewells with coarse salt and nothing else.
Here are some of the things that I thought may be killing from talking to other anglers, but I don't fully understand how that can be right as one side are always fine, the other all die.
The oxygenators reacting with something in the water quality.
The fact I am pumping in new water, and may go from the clean to the dirty and the difference in the water is killing them.
Some sort of electric surge going through the well when I am running from spot to spot ( I have cheaped when its idle and its fine )
I literally lost second place this weekend because of fish deaths and its frustrating as I don't know what to do.
Looking for any advice.
Thanks in advance!
