"There was a big B.A.S.S. tournament here last week," he told us. "They released all the fish alive, but I guess they didn’t stay that way."

Such incidents were more common back then, especially in hot weather, and they caused a lot of antitournament sentiment among local fishermen. Tournament organizers argued that the licensed contestants could have legally kept a limit of fish each day, but did all they could to release them alive instead. They pointed out that the number of fish caught in any tournament couldn’t make a dent in the lake’s population even if they all died.

There were few statistics available back then on delayed mortality, but tournament opponents pointed to the obvious live-release failures as proof that tournament promoters and participants weren’t doing enough. They argued that not just one, but 10 to 20 tournaments were held each weekend on Big Sam, making the catch numbers significant and, regardless of legal limits, tournament fishermen wouldn’t impact the lake at all if there were no tournaments allowed. The controversy continues today.

Thinking back, the scene that confronted us at the marina was an in-your-face shock that looked worse than it was. A couple hundred dead bass looks like a couple thousand in much the same way that a few drops of oil on the pavement under your truck can look like a whole quart. Still, post-tournament bass and walleye mortality is a black eye for competitive fishing, and pro anglers, tournament organizers and boatbuilders continually fight to prevent it. Their efforts have accomplished a lot in the last two decades.

A typical livewell in the early 1970s was a rough-sided fiberglass box with small bilge pumps modified to fill and aerate it. One model of Chrysler’s 17-foot Bass Runner offered a cooler for a driver’s seat that was modified with a pump and plumbing to serve as a livewell. Fishermen often modified coolers and other containers with pumps and spray bar aerators or bait bucket air pumps to serve as livewells. These early efforts left a lot to be desired.

FAST FORWARD TO TODAY
Front-deck livewells have all but disappeared in tournament boats. They were convenient for the angler in the bow seat, but gave the fish a punishing ride and upset the balance needed by high-performance bass boats. Sharp edges, square corners and rough surfaces have been replaced by slick-walled liners with rounded corners. Bigger fill and aeration pumps exchange livewell water more often and force more air into it. Interior lights help fishermen see and capture fish quickly with a minimum of handling. Livewell pump-out systems let tournament anglers conveniently fill their catch bags with aerated water that the fish are already acclimated to, eliminating shock from sudden changes in water temperature or chemical makeup.

Are today’s livewells good enough? Dean Rojas put the 16-gallon livewell in his Skeeter ZX to the test at Florida’s Lake Toho in January 2001. It kept just over 45 pounds of bass alive enabling him to set a new B.A.S.S. record for a one-day tournament catch. According to Dean Burnett, national sales manager and marketing director for Skeeter, that livewell was the end result of a grant the company issued about seven years ago to the University of Texas. Skeeter challenged UT to design a livewell that, within a given set of parameters, would be the best livewell system ever made.

MOBILE AQUARIUMS
UT came up with a design resembling a mobile aquarium, and Pat Hawkins, Skeeter’s engineering manager, adapted it to the company’s ZX series tournament boats. Aeration takes place from the top down using a spray head mounted above the water. Skeeter uses a dual pump system in each livewell: A fill pump aerates with fresh, outside water while the boat is at rest, and a recirculating pump aerates with water from the livewell while the boat is underway. Both pumps develop enough spray velocity to drive air into the livewell water and stir it at the same time. The spray head incorporates a venturi that picks up air inside the livewell compartment and adds it to the water spray. An extra large 11/2-inch overflow outlet prevents flooding when the fill pump is used to aerate the water continuously. Fill pumps are mounted to bring in water through the transom from as close to the keel as possible so they can reach the deepest water the boat’s draft allows. The deeper the water the cooler it is, and even those few inches can make a difference in temperature. Cooler water is desirable because it stresses the fish less and it can absorb more air, making aeration more efficient.

Skeeter’s tournament boats use a true dual-livewell system with two completely independent wells, each with its own fill and recirculating pumps. This allows several options. The driver can use livewell water as ballast to balance the boat when only one livewell is needed. Since the tanks don’t share water through a divider, a water problem in one well can’t affect fish in the other. A big fish can be placed in one well and several smaller ones in the other. To pump out either livewell, you operate its recirculating pump and pull out on the spray bar to activate a built-in diverter valve. It routes the water out of the boat through a fitting mounted high on the gunwale.

The UT team determined that deeper livewells are better for bass than long, shallow livewells. This was based on the premise that bass tend to relax when they can stack up, but continually try to swim to the head of the line when forced to line up one behind the other.

CUSTOMER INPUT
Consumer pressure has also affected livewell design. Walleyes seem to do just fine in a shallower livewell, according to pro walleye angler Jimmy Bell. In spite of his opinion, an extraordinary number of boat show patrons and visitors to Skeeter dealers looked at the livewells in the company’s early walleye boats and remarked that they didn’t look deep enough. This consumer feedback caused the company to add 4 inches of livewell depth to Skeeter’s 2002 models. Bell laments that he now has to haul around extra water weight just because of a misconception. Yet, who knows? Maybe some of those boats will be used to catch bass that will appreciate the extra depth.

Oxygen Equation Has Huge Impact

Future livewell designs will most likely include pure oxygen injection systems. I’m convinced of this after having read the startling statistics compiled by David Kinser of Oxygenation Systems of Texas. The air we breathe is only 20 percent oxygen and that means even when an aerator fully saturates the water in a livewell, only 20 percent of the absorbed gas is oxygen.

Biologists consider oxygen at less than 3 parts per million (ppm) of water to be lethal to fish, and a content of 6 or 7 ppm to be dangerous to stressed fish. Gene Gilliland, a fishery biologist for the Oklahoma Dept. of Wildlife Conservation, conducted a test comparing conventional aerators with Kinser’s Oxygen Edge injection system during the summer of 1998. Air temperatures ranged from 78 F in the morning to as high as 108 F in the afternoon. Tournament conditions were simulated and bass were caught and kept in Gilliland’s bass boat livewell during each eight-hour test period using either continuous flow-through aeration by the fill pump or pure oxygen from Kinser’s system. After the trial the fish were kept in special holding pens for six days.

The conventional aerator provided between 4 and 7 ppm of oxygen and the bass that it kept alive experienced a post-event mortality rate of 22 percent. Adding salt to the livewell and recirculating ice-cooled water reduced the mortality rate to 18 percent. Kinser’s Oxygen Edge system peaked at 22 ppm with recirculated water and dropped to 8 ppm briefly when lake water was added to flush waste ammonia and carbon dioxide from the livewell. The delayed mortality of fish kept in the oxygenated water was 7 percent. No ice, no salt, just oxygen and less than a third as many fish died.

Our litigation-infested times demand that boat manufacturers and fishermen proceed with caution when adding a pressurized oxygen system to a boat containing gasoline, batteries and numerous combustibles. It’s done routinely in airplanes and emergency vehicles and it can be done in boats. According to Kinser, U.S. Coast Guard codes governing compressed gas cylinders on boats are the same as those for SCUBA air tanks. Both must be safely secured onboard. Kinser’s systems range from about $365 to $465 plus shipping. A 3-pound oxygen tank lasts for 47 hours and a 9-pound tank lasts for 189 hours. The tanks can be refilled for $12 to $15.

Is saving up to two-thirds of the released bass that die after tournaments worth this much money and effort? You might just as well ask if tournament fishing should continue. Reducing post-tournament mortality in fish that are released alive is a worthy and necessary goal for everyone in competitive fishing. The survival of organized freshwater tournament fishing may well depend on it.