ESA BETT

[Riymos]

Howzit Guy's

I have been watching the ESA Bett Series on TV.What i did notice and this is not only on ESA BETT but also on the overseas shows as well.When they catch the bass in comps they keep them alive in live wells.On ESA i see that they take them to a holding tank and keep them there as well.

My question is this.I am a Saltwater Angler and through all my experience i have been told that the quicker you get the fish back in the water,the more chance it has of survival.Also the least amount of handling puts the fish under less stress etc.So does this amount of handling from live wells in the boat to holding tanks and then on to be held up by the winning angler on display,does this not have any serious effects on the survival of the fish?

In my opinion i am sure that this puts the bass under imense stress,is there any one who could maybe clarify this for me.Im sure LGF ,Loams And Johan VC have had this experience so maybe you guy's can give me some awnsers.

Cheers Riymos

 

[Little Green Fish]

Riymos

Getting the fish back into the water as soon as possible is very important, however having said that, I explained to a pro that I had to actually gut a dying fish once cause it was bleeding too much, he then explained to me that he had a similar case but that the fish was already floating belly up and it didn't look like it was going to surveive, he had placed the fish in the airated live well on his boat and the fish not only survive but stopped bleeding and was just as lively as it would have been when just caught by the yime they had weighed the fish at the end of the day's fishing, So, my conclusion is that getting the fish back into the water, either it being the body from where it was caught or a live well on a boat or a holding tank as soon as possible is very important.

On the handling part, well i don't have any info nor all that much experience as I get them out of the water, remove the hook and lure, weigh and photograph them and get them back in the water ASAP, so not too much handling , but logic tells me it should have some effect on the fish, what exactly I'm not too sure.

LGF

 

[Riymos]

Howzit LGF

Well i to know this.What does concern me is the stress factor though,i mean all that handling holding up being weighed in that manner then put into a holding tank and the eing held up again and then put back into a tank to get some sort of chemaical antiseptic treatment and then only to be released.Well i some how feel that these fish are being put under imense stress.

To my small knowledge of fish,i stand to be corrected on this,i think i saw it somewhere that when a fish is put under stress it builds up some sort of toxin within it's blood stream and thus this eventually kills them evven though they may survive initially.

Do you guy's know of this and what are your sugestions pertaining to this and my obsivations.The reason i ask it's just that we as anglers especially the Salt Water anglers are always put under pressure to ensure recovery and promote release.I do realise that the Freshies do as well it's just that the time factor between the two aspects are very different.

If you take a shad out of the sea for about 5 to 8 minutes in most cases it wont even swim of again beacause it is so exhausted from the lack of oxygen in it's blood.Is this not the same in the fresh water side of things.

Hope this doesnt offend anyone i just thought it would a great topic of discussion,and we could then get a better understandig of the differennces between the fresh water fish and the salt water fish species..

Cheers Riymos

 

[Land Locked]

Hands up everyone who has a fishtank.

I used to breed fresh water tropicals. You chase them around the tank with a net, grossly over load a 25litre bucket with about 125 30mm fish. Carry it out to the car, drive to the petshop that is buying.(back then a 35 to 40 minute drive)No aeration. If it was going to be a longer trip I would put an oxygen tab or two into the bucket. The result of all that was a mortality rate of less than 2%. Most of that mortatlity was caused by stress/shock from the difference in the water between my tanks and the petshops tanks.

Hope that gives some insight.

LL

 

[Riymos]

Howzit Land Locked

Well not really boet because that just confuses me more.Is what you are trying to say is that the strees put on these small tropical fish not detremental at all.If so then is there a difference between Tropical and Fresh water bass and then saltwater fish.

I find this issue very confusing.For instance if we take shad as live bait and keep them in a bucket even change the water every now and then,in most cases these fish dont even last a coupe of hours without airration,and also the nitrate levels pick u so much in the bucket that it kills them anyway even with airation.

So how is that these Tropicals are not effected.

Cheers Riymos 

 

[Loams]

Riymos

You mentioned chemicals earlier. Most fishermen with boats have something called "please release me" You add some of that to the water and it acts like a tonic and antiseptic... I am sort of guessing here. This stuff helps fish calm down. Also, in an aerated live well, the oxygen levels are often better than in the lake/dam itself, so it helps the fish.

Regarding the handling. Care is taken to not touch the fish's body, as this (as I am sure you know) robs the fish of its natural slime protection.

What IRKS me is them Yanks that catch those 10pound + Bass and then they yank on their lips, I dont think that is very cool. Having said that, their mortality rate is very low. They take great care of their fish after the weigh in. They actually get put into tanks for a while and the fish that are strong gets released with a special boat after the comp. The ones that are ill gets treated before they are put back.

There is a competition I think on Lake Kariba for Tigerfish each year. I watched the broadcast of it, and while I was watching did some maths. Every day those guys took out +/- a ton of Tiger fish alone. How much of it was released??? Nothing!!! This was a three day comp, so you can well imagine how many Tiger fish it takes to make up a ton if your average catch is 3kg's.

Us Africans have very far to go to learn about catch and release in comps, and I do believe that the BETT trail are currently the leaders. I dont know how seafishing comps work, but most I saw were killed by the time it came to weigh-in. Maybe this has changed.

 

[Riymos]

Howzit Loams

Thanks Buddy.The big questions still remains though what is the real diference between Salt Water and fresh water.why is it that the Salt Water fish seem to be less hardy then the fresh water Bass etc.

You know it's dificult to really understand how these bass sem to be able to survive and yet most saltys die soon after catching them.

Cheers Riymos

Hey Loams can that antiseptic be used on salt water fish as well would be nice to know maybe we could use it in our live wells to keep out live bait alive and kicking.

Cheers Riymos

 

[Loams]

http://www.sure-life.com/

These are the people that do the chemicals, have a look, they might have the right product

 

[Johanvc]

Before I read further. 

Yes we do keep the fish in live wells while fishing and as soon as we done we weigh them in. Now that tank you see their yes it is a holding tank but they don’t keep them in there. After they weigh the fish they put them in that drum to release. That’s why there is a pipe running from that drum in to the dam.

 

I fish the ESA BETT tournament trail

 

[Riymos]

Howzit Boet

No worries i  know you fish that Tornament.What i was trying to get a better understanding of is the differeces between what you fresh watre guy's do in oder for the fish to survive better.

So that hopefully we in the salty section may use some of your techniques to help us better control our live bait survival as well as maybe increase the survival rate of our released fish.

Would you guy's sugest lets say of we had a baby pool with airator on the beach with us would you sugest that we put this chemical in the water put our catch in the pool fisrt and then release the fish.

Would that maybe help the survival rate of slat water fish..

Cheers Riymos

 

[Johanvc]

You can use release me or just the salt that guys use in koi ponds. That ensures that the fish does not stress too much and if the fish is bleeding stops that as well. And also kills all unwanted bacteria.  Yes keeping fish in a livewell is a risky part. Ask me as I lost 3 fish at the BETT at witbank.

 

Yes it is recommended that you don’t handle the fish to much as it does put stress on the fish. And stress causes the fish to lose weight as well. So you need to handle the fish as little as possible and ensure that you supply enough exigent. Now the problem with the fish are that you need to keep water temp down as much as possible and just circulate that water. Entering fresh water will cause the fish to cook as the water temp in your live well and the actual water temp is different.

 

So what we do is add half a cup of salt to the live well and then use frozen 500ml coke bottles to keep temp down. By doing that you keep stress to a minimal. We only handle the fish when we take them of the hook and when we put them in our weigh bag. After that you don’t tough them again as you empty the bag in a basket that they use to weigh the fish. After that the basket gets emptied in a holding tank then they get pushed down a pipe back in to the dam. Now that are stress full for the fish and unfortunately they do lose some. That’s why you will always see that on the results of a comp they have a section on the results showing the amount of dead fish.

Unfortunately all sports has their injuries and we do try and keep the fish alive to return them to the water.

 

[Johanvc]

Now i am not sure about you salt water guys. But thats what we do when fishing for Bass

 

[Little Green Fish]

Hi Riymos

I think the question you have can be partly answered in that saltwater does not have the oxygen levels that freshwater has, hence the difference in survival time of fish caught from these two environments.  So, what can you do, in order to better the saltwater situation that you are describing, well, oxygen for one might be well the only thing you guys need to add, other than that, I'm not too sure if anything else will work, but thats just my opinion.

LGF

 

[Loams]

LGF, wouldnt the fish then be used to lower oxygen levels???

Riymos, I am curious as to why you want to keep seafish alive? If you intend on eating it, you kill it and it's done, if not, you just put her back? Or is this for competitions fishing from boats. Don't seaboats have livewells?

 

[Riymos]

Howzit Loams

Well let me fill you in on my curiosity.When we were having the Garrick run last year we needed to get live bait,which at that time was like gold to get.I used to have to work late on saturday till about 2am in the morning so what we used to was go down to the piers andtry get some live bait.

We had pumps airators buckets etc etc .We used to get a few Shad and a couple of mozies and away we went to at least get about 2 or 3 hours sleep before we went to the beach.When we awoke we found nothing but dead fish.I eventually did some reseach into livewells filteration etc etc and found that the main cause was nitrate build up in the water.

To cut a long storie short i wanted to know if the fresh water owes manage to keep those big bass alive for so long and to go through that amount of handling and then still have them live well i wanted to hopefully gain some insight on how and get the finer details so that i maybe able to use similar techniques to keep my live bait alive for longer.

Also with all the negative exposure fishing has been getting recently about catch and release and the survival rate of fish,i thought that this was a valid topic for discussion,which in turn would give the guy's a better understanding of the differences between the two types of fish,and the revival and survival rate between the two..

Cheers Riymos

 

[Loams]

Cool, I had to wonder

The link I posted earlier also have stuff for live bait wells, just have a look at their products.

Google.co.za might also be your friend here in finding products. Make sure you tick "Pages from SA only" before you do your search and you might just find some shops that sell the right products for ya.

Good luck

 

[Riymos]

Thanks Boet

Will do my best..

Cheers Riymos

 

 

[Land Locked]

Riymos,

Sorry, back to the fish tank thing. For keeping salt or fresh water fish in a tank, surface area is the single biggest limiting factor. In a 3 foot tank (fresh) I can comfortably keep 100 1 cm fish but only about 25 2cm fish. A rule of thumb here is that a 2 cm fish has 8 times the biomass as a 1 cm fish. Nitrates are different from nitrites, nitrites are toxic to fish while nitrates are not exactly beneficial are quite managable. Nitrites are proccesed into nitrates by the bacteria in the biofilter. Removing toxins (Amonia, nitrites etc.) from the water involves filtering the water through an activated charcoal filter.
So a single shad in a bucket where the poor shad can barely stretch out, is NOT getting enough oxygen, also nitrite levels will climb because the volume of water is not enough for the fish.

Hope this helps,

LL