How does pulling a bass from the deep cooler water up into the hot upper water in the summer affect them?

 

the reason I ask is because yesterday I caught one a little over 7 pounds out of about 20 ft of water on a chatterbait and unfortunately it didn’t survive.  It wasn’t what I would call a “bad hook” either.  Yeah she inhaled it deep in the outer part of her throat but the hook came out easily.  She did bleed a bit but not anymore than others I’ve caught that survived.  It wasn’t a gill hook at all.  I tried for about 30 minutes to keep her alive but unfortunately was unsuccessful so I did end up bringing her home and cleaning her even though bass are not my favorite fish to eat.  I always hate to have any bass die on me but when they are big bass it’s even worse.

So many variables at play, it would be hard to determine. Short term and with immediate release, any affect should be minimal with just a brief recovery time and likely just show up if you sampled blood parameters. Temperature difference from the surface to 20 ft. if often a lot less than many would imagine, since all the water above any thermocline would be heated pretty consistently. Even so, all water bodies vary, so hard to generalize. Add in the health/condition of the fish before capture, length of fight, how long out of water, how badly hooked, etc., etc. It happens.

It was a short fight.  She hit pretty close to the boat.  I don’t know.  This is really my first year of fishing deep waters like that because I’ve never had a fish finder to look for structures that far out before and just blind casting in the middle of an 80 acre lake with zero idea what’s below you was just never my cup of tea.  It was just weird to me because I have caught fish before with a hook up that I thought was way worse and they survived.  I only had her out of the water long enough to get a weight on her.  She was a healthy looking fat bass.  I didn’t find anything unusual inside her when I cleaned her.  No obvious parasites or anything.  

Deep is relative to each lake. Our local lakes the thermocline sets up around 35’ or deeper. The surface water temps where your livewell water comes from could be 10 degrees warmer then water at 35-40 deep. The reason is the water temperature slowly change as it gets deep to where a faster temp change occurs creating a thermocline.

Your bass may have been deeper then the depth it struck your lure and pressure change coupled with temperature change over stressed the bass. 
I made up a release stringer made from 300 lb mono and 2 SST D ring safety clips and 1 lb sinker to hold the bass down 10’ to acclimate before releasing big bass.

Can take a photo and email to you if interested.

Tom

Hmm.  I never thought about making something like that.  I’ve actually got some quick release clips that would be perfect for something like that.

 

Thanks for the idea.