Keeping bass alive

[Snag]

I am re posting this from one of the other threads to hopefully help everyone keep bass alive during tournaments. This is my post from "Tournament Talk"

One thing we have found in the clubs I fish is that if you have a fish on his side in your livewell you can take a bigger ice fishing weight and clip it to his bottom fin. This will put him upright and he can swim back down usually making things better for him. This works great for bass taken from deep water also when they get the bends. There is a gaget out there for returning fish to deep water with the bends. It consists of a 8-10 oz. weight with wire in it. One end ties to your rod and the other is placed through the fishes mouth. Drop the fish into the water and simply pull up on your rod. This pulls the wire out of the fishes mouth and leaves him at the bottom where they can decompress themselves and they are fine. If you want more info on this gaget get with me and I will send you a picture or I will send you one. One of the guys in our club makes them and sells them to us in the club for $2.00. Pretty cheap to keep fish alive I think. Hope this helps.

Keep them alive and it will keep tournament fishing alive,

Snag

[Nick_Barr]

good tip, thanks

[Turtle]

For tournament fisherman, take an 18gauge needle and bleed the air bladder.  Find the point where the two dorsal fins meet and and draw a straight line down, match it up with the middle of the pectoral fin.  Once you have that spot insert the needle at a 45 degree angle towards the head, but parallel to the body of the fish.  Make sure you slip the needle under a scale, otherwise it will block the release of air.  It's a little tough breaking through the skin, but once you do it glides right into the air bladder.  once you have the the point of entry figured out, lower the fish into the water and insert until you get air bubbles, and usually it is very evident.Sometimes it helps to massage the belly of the fish to get all the air out.  i have doen this quite ab bit and never had a problem, usually those fish are kicking hard come weigh in time.  If you are releasing that fish caught deep, usualy if you release them quickly they will dive right back down quickly and be ok.

[Snag]

We have talked about doing that too but even with me being a medic I'm not comfortable doing that. If you don't fix the problem you will make it worse for the fish. Thats just me, I know people who can do that successfully and thats great but I just use my ice weights or the deep release weight for my own comfort.. lol. Another great tip though, thanks.

Snag