Ok, so you really are all in for C&R or CPR but many of you fish tournaments and in tournaments you got to keep the fish for an extended period of time before you can take them to the weight in to be weighted, so where you put them for the time being ? in the livewell, and what is a livewell ? a container, but there 's a teeny tiny difference in size between a 40 gal container and the millions of gallons container from where you took the fish, size matters a lot.

Now to exemplify: picture yourself as Mr or Mrs Bass, you are at your home minding your business when suddenly something that looks like burger comes your way, you chew on it and before you know it the burger is fighting back at you, not only that, it 's taking you away from your home, you resist but the burger is a lot stronger than you, you fight back but still the burger is stronger than you and this keeps on going on until you finally get tired and surrender to the burger, heck, you just ran the marathon non stop to take a breath and rest a little, your pulse is skyrocketing, you gasp for air to breath and ...... the burger puts a bag on your head and ties it to your neck, dumps you in a bucket with water, closes the lid and leaves you there cooking under the hot sun, dumping you in the middle of the Sahara desert without any resources is a shure way to die fast and painfully.

That is what your livewell can become in a day of fishing, so you are C&R aren 't you ? yeah, right  

The purpose of what I 'm about to explain so you can avoid that story I just told has the only purpose of explaining in simple terms what happens and how it can be avoided if you only take the time to do it right.

There are enemies in your livewell, those enemies are:

1.- Oxygen depletion:

The example of the burger putting a plastic bag on your head and tying it around your neck is done for this purpose, you can breath only the air that 's inside the bag, but the air ammount inside the bag is not what matters, what matters is how much oxygen is in that mix of gasses we call air, and it matters because we, like fish breath oxygen, the ammount of oxygen supply in that air is limited to the size of the container holding it, you and the fish need oxygen to live otherwise death is the only way out. How much oxygen you need depends on many things, you don 't need a lot when you are at rest, you need more if you walk, you need more when you run, now picture yourself after running the marathon, until you have gotten enough air and your heart ouput has lowered you 'll need all the oxygen you can get until you reach the rest level again, it can take seconds, minutes or hours, now if you add to that that the burger scared the living crap out of you it can take hours before you mr/mrs bass can reach the rest level where you oxygen requirements are minimal. So your head is in a bag, for how long you think you can stand it ?  you can stand it until you........ run out of oxygen  . But that 's not the end of it, then the burger dumps in your brother, then later your cousin and later your grandpappy, Hey it 's getting awfully crowed here inside and we 're running low on oxygen !  

2.- Carbon dioxide saturation

Crap, we all here in the livewell ( with our heads inside bags ) not only have to deal with the fact that we are running low on oxygen, we also have to deal that we are poisoning ourselves with ever breath we take cuz we eliminate carbon dioxide which is poisonous !   , the more breathing ( and everybody is scared crapless ) the more we produce and the more poisoning is becomes, I dunno but in my neck of the woods poison = DEATH sooner or later, it 's just a matter of ammount, dang! what do I tell the rest, hold your breath ?!?!  :-?

3.- Ammonia level increase

We 's screwed so far, we don 't have nuff oxygen, we are poisoning ourselves with carbon dioxide and now the family dumps it 's waste, for crying out loud you guys ! couldn 't you wait to pee in another moment ?    so now the pee and poo is burning my lungs ! oops, I meant my gills. It 's like trying to breath with ammonia gas floating around, what a nerve !

4.- Rising water temperatures

Hollllllllllyyyyyyyy cow ! somebody turn on the AC soon ! I 'm getting roasted ! Hey ! tell the burger with s*t for brains that we 's getting cooked in here purty darn fast !  , I never wanted to end up as fish soup and ....... never imagined I was going to be the main ingredient !  >

Funny isn 't it, reading it the way I put it, well it sounds funny .... as you are not the one with all that stuff going around. That 's the kind of hell your livewell can become if you don 't take precautions to keep your fish.

How to avoid it ?

Will talk about it and the whys ? as soon as I can cuz I gotto go to work in my other business. Stay tuned.

Not so sure about your livewell, but mine has recirculation pumps and aeration pumps that adds new water on a timer and pushes out the old water to keep the water clean, cool, and oxygenated.

Please Release me + recirc+ plus hourly water exchanges when its over 85 outside.

Problems solved

What a story that was. My livewell re circulates water and also pumps in fresh water with fresh oxygen. I'm sure there may be some "poo and pee" in it also but I can't help what is in the lake already. As far as cooking and "fish soup", when it's hot we add ice from the cooler everynow and then to keep the water cool. That along with "catch and release" I have not killed a fish in 8 + years. Never have I had a fish die while in my livewell. Our club hands out catch and release every year for all members so everyone uses it. Also, when we are on Detroit River and St. Clair River, if Mr or Mrs Bass get the "bends" due to comming up from deeper water, I am there with my trusty syringe to de compress them, always using clean, a septic measures. We do everything we can to protect our fish and I can count on one hand how many have not made it club wide. I would say we do a pretty good job at taking care of our fish and I'm sure alot of other clubs do the same too..... Snag

When I was fishing tournaments regularly, I would put a frozen 20oz bottle or two in the water during the heat of the day.  That just made sure that the water stayed cool.  It wasn't enough to drastically change the water temperatures, but it kept it from turning into a boiler.

The livewell's I've used also had water replenishment and recirculation.

I agree with 4bizz and the guys who mentioned ice. I have used as much as 6 blocks in one day.

I'm interested with your follow up Raul. You do bring good points. And nice way of putting it!

So where were we ? oh yeah we were getting cooked, suffocated and intoxicated in the livewell, let 's begin the whys and what they do and what can be done to reduce or eliminate them:

1.- Oxygen depletion

We left the subject that we had our heads inside bags. The oxygen content in your livewell is limited and can only support for a certain ammount of pounds of fish. How much oxygen a fish needs depends in several factors being the two most significant ones for the purpose:

size of the fish ( bigger fish need more oxygen ),

activity level of the fish ( resting fish need less oxygen that active fish )

That is called oxygen budget.

Many of the effects of oxygen depletion are not apparent but do happen, the fish breathes faster ( more CO2 ) in an attempt to compensate for the lack of oxygen, the low oxygen levels increase the heart beat rate ( the heart needs to pump more to deliver more oxygen to the tissues ), the methabolic rate increases because the fish is stressed which causes lactic acid build-up which destroys the celular membranes and then the kidney has to deal with that waste and it can do it as long as it the nephrones don 't clog ( they can clog very fast ).

That being said and even though many are saying: but mine has recirculation pumps and aeration pumps that adds new water on a timer and pushes out the old water to keep the water clean, cool, and oxygenated not everybody has a boat with that kind of livewells specially those who fish from not a streamlined glossy bass boat but from a boat where the "livewell" is a 40 qt cooler, guys like Harry n 'Charlie are the most and not guys like Papadopolous. It 's nice to have a boat with all those amenities but not all can afford one. You can transform a 40 qt cooler into a livewell and not need a ton of money to do it.

Oxygen content is limited by the ammount of surface the water can have in direct contact with the air, the more surface of water you can expose to a water/air interfase the more oxygen can be dissolved in the water. Circulation is important to keep the water moving but aereation is more important because you increase the water surface to the water/air interfase and increase the oxygen content, more or heavier fish means you have to increase the oxygen content and that can be achieved by increasing the aeration. Water circulation alone is not enough if the water/air interfase is not broken.

If your livewell has a spray bar be shure it 's high enough above the water level to create a gurgling sound and that you can actually see bubbles forming. For those who are adapting a container for livewell use a good source of aereation is a portable battery operated air pump, air tubing and one or several airstones to provide the aereation, it 's noisy, consumes batteries but it works, speaking about airstones there are a lot of types of airstones in the market, the ones that need the least ammount of pressure from the air pump and that generate the most bubbles are foam air stones, you can purchase an air curtain from a pet or aquarium store and attach it to the bottom of the cooler with silicone sealant to keep the bases in fixed position, the "stone" attaches to the bases via a clip, to avoid it from coming loose you attach it to the clips with a rubber band. Always keep your aeraeation system running before the fish actually need more oxygen.

2.- Carbon dioxide buildup

The effects of carbon dioxide buildup can 't be seen because the occur inside the red blood cells which contain the hemoglobin ( which carries the oxygen to the cells and in exchange takes the CO2 to be eliminated as waste at the gills ), the carbonic anhidrase is an enzime that breaks the bind between the CO2 and the hemoglobin molecule in order to make that hemoglobin molecule avilable for the oxygen to bind to it, if there 's more disolved CO2 in the water it means that there are more CO2 molecules eager to bind to the hemoglobin than there are Oxygen molecules the result is that the red blood cells instead of carrying oxygen are carrying CO2 with them because the carbonic anhidrase can 't keep up with the ammount of available CO2, besides that, the difusion of CO2 is proportional to the ammount in and out the fish if both are high the difusion can not take place so the blood cells carrying CO2 continue to travel through the circulatory system and the fish cells suffer from oxygen depravation and eventually die.

The situation here is that it 's not like 1 per Oxygen for 1 of CO2 and the reason is that CO2 is a lot more water soluble than Oxygen, it take more effort to dissolve oxygen in the water than it is to dissolve CO2 but as easy at it is to dissolve is easy to eliminate. How ? with good and vigorous aereation.

3.- Ammonia level rise

I did mention that everybody was peeing and pooing in the livewell, well it 's not actually the pee and poo what causes the ammonia levels to rise, it helps but it 's not the main cause, they are not like us that we eliminate our waste nitrogenous compounds through pee and poo, our kidney does the job of scrubbing the blood free of them, their kidney ( in the case of freshwater fish ) has another important job which is to eliminate the excess water from the blood while it retains the salts, fish eliminate most of their nitrogenous waste compounds through the gills, so as long as the fish is alive and kicking this process takes place, the fish in practical terms pees through the gills continously. Those nitrogenous compounds have to go somewhere and they go to the water surrounding the fish, the problem is that they easily form ammonia which is toxic, the most important effect on the fish is that it causes swelling of the gills, so the fish can 't breath because it 's lungs are swollen, it can 't elimiante the nitrogenous compounds because the gills are swollen so ammonia buildup is a double edged sword, it causes the fish to suffocate and it causes the fish to get poisoned by it 's waste nitrogenous compounds.

There are ways to deal with ammoinia build up

1.- Eliminate the precursors of ammonia: easier said than done because in order to do that you need a skimmer.

2.- Bind the ammonia precursors and free ammonia: there are compounds to which ammonia can be driven and locked, zeolite is the most common one and it does make a really good job, only problem is that in order to be an efective tool the water has to circulate through it. There are other chemical compounds that bind ammonia to them, you add the product to the water and it acts almost immediately reducing the free ammonia levels, problem is that you have to add the product on a regular basis to keep up with the ammonia as it 's being excreted by the fish.

3.- Dilution: the easiest way to reduce ammonia levels is by diluting them by changing the water partially, the ammonia won 't go away it 's still being produced but you reduce the ammount by changing the water, the more and more frequent the better.

So for those of you who don 't own a boat with a livewell system, please change the water frequently. Not all livewell systems have water exchange system in a bass boat ( you don 't get what you don 't pay for ), if your livewell system doesn 't exchange the water think of it as being a cooler, you need to change part of the water all you can.

4.- Rising water temperatures

So we are getting cooked inside, what happens when we get cooked ? oh well, we get cooked, kidding aside, rising water temperatures inside your livewells are also a double edged sword. On one hand, the animal can only tolerate high temperatures for a limited ammount of time, exposure for longer periods of time causes damage because the animal 's engine can not run at high speeds for hours without proper cooling, the first effect of rising temperatures is an increase in the methabolic rate which means the fish needs more oxygen and this can rapidly cause oxygen depletion, as the methabolic rate increases the more CO2 is produced which causes poor gas exchange at the red blood cells, the methabolic rate increases so it increases the waste nitrogenous compound excretion and we get into ammonia posioning. What happens to your vehicle when your water pump blows or the engine fan doesn 't work or when your radiator has no liquid inside ? the engine burns out, well, that 's wahat happens to the fish, their engine burns out. That 's one edge of the sword.

The other edge of the sword occurs because the ammount of oxygen that can be dissolved in the water is inversly proportional to the water temperature, in easy to understand terms, the warmer the water less soluble the oxygen is in it.

So what happens to the fish when kept in too warm water, usually their engine overheats and dies fisrt before they can suffocate to death.

So you say you have the best livewell system available in your boat, does it have a chiller ? because unles it comes with an integrated chiller to refigerate the water and decrease it 's temperature to levels where the fish 's engine won 't burn out your livewell system is only changing the water from where it can get it, from the surface which is usually several degrees warmer than from a couple of feet below where the water is colder.

You need to reduce the water temperature to colder temperatures and you can do that by placing ice inside the livewell or the cooler you are using as a livewell or the fish will cook to death.

There are other enemies but those four are accountable for the most deaths.

The important thing is that those four and many of the others are under your control and that to can remedy them.

Excellent post.  This is a keeper.  Thanks, Raul.

Raul,

The livewell I have in my jon boat, I installed myself. I have it mounted to where I all I do to fill it up is pull the plug in the bottom (drilling the hole in the bottom of my boat was one of the toughest things I've had to do! LOL!). Anyway, my question to you is, how many of the factors come into play in my case? The only time I install the plug in my livewell after I a bass in it is when I run the livewell. At that point, the areator comes on until I'm at my next spot. On electric only lakes that I fish, the plug is not put back in. I haven't lost a bass yet, not even on the hottest day in the summer. I just want to make sure I keep it that way!

The fact is most tournament fisherman believe putting bass in the livewell and recirculating water on a timely basis keeps the bass alive and in good health. As the senario points out there is more going on in a live then recirculating water.

Understanding that bass breath dissolved oxygen in controlled levels; must higher than 3 mg/L and lower than 12 mg/L of DO is important during the warm water summer period. Cooler water holds higher levels of DO and when the water temperatures exceed 75 degrees the DO dispurses quickly. Because of the 2 factors; low DO and high water temperatures, it is very important not to add 80 degree surface water to the live well, you may be killing the bass, not helping them.

Every tournament bass boat should be equiped with an oxygenator pump that adds DO to the water, not hot water.

Adding ice to the water is OK if the ice was frozen using de chlorinated

water or frozen water bottles that contain the water. Adding with ice with chlorine is OK if other live well additives like Catch & Release are added. During the summer warm water period it is essentail that the live well water is kept in the low 70's and DO levels around 7 mg/L.

No matter how well you manage your livewell a percentage of the bass will die of post stress. If you have a bass that has rolled over, don't toss it in the lake and let it die later, keep it.

For you night tournament fisherman; the DO producing weeds are comsumming DO at night, lowering the surface DO levels. Do not recirculate warm low level DO water into the live well at night.

WRB

Raul,

The livewell I have in my jon boat, I installed myself. I have it mounted to where I all I do to fill it up is pull the plug in the bottom (drilling the hole in the bottom of my boat was one of the toughest things I've had to do! LOL!). Anyway, my question to you is, how many of the factors come into play in my case? The only time I install the plug in my livewell after I a bass in it is when I run the livewell. At that point, the areator comes on until I'm at my next spot. On electric only lakes that I fish, the plug is not put back in. I haven't lost a bass yet, not even on the hottest day in the summer. I just want to make sure I keep it that way!

Yes, I understand the hard part of drilling a hole, common sense tells you not to drill holes through the hull, specially not through the bottom  ;D. You haven 't lost a bass yet, but it only means that from the moment you put it into the livewell until you released the fish it survived, you can 't tell what happened to the fish after being released, it may be a matter of minutes or hours or even days before all the events I narrated take their toll.  Analize what you do and reading what I wrote you can diagnose which problems can be associated to the way you handle the fish.

The easiest ones to spot right away because the signs are so evident are oxygen depletion and water temperature rise, the more silent ones are CO2 buildup which you can 't see because it takes place at celular level and the signs are not evident and ammonia buildup, the signs begin to show much later when you are no longer in possesion of the fish.

Ice can come in many forms, some are fish safe and some are not, if you purchase a bag of ice cubes for human consumption those are fish safe, they do not contain chlorine, chlorine has been eliminated from the water used to manufacture them because that water used in that kind of ice usually gets to the plant from your municipal water system ( in which chlorine is used as a desinfectant ) but chlorine has to be removed because it damages the membranes of the reverse osmosis filters, when it enters the plant first is filtered with activated charcoal, then it 's filtered with reverse osmosis, then ozonized and then treated with UV light before it 's turned into ice cubes.

Ice bars are normally not chlorine free, ice bars are not meant for human consumption, they are meant mainly for chilling purposes like crushed ice, so ice from ice bars is not fish safe. If you use this type of ice you need to use a decholinator solution to remove the chlorine from the ice, even though simple aereation eliminates the chlorine found in the water it takes time to do it and by the time the chlorine is finally gone you may already have caused damage to the fish.

Ice cubes from your refrigerator may or may not be fish safe, it depends on with which type of water you made them, if you used tap water then they are not fish safe, if your refrigerator makes them with an ice cube system then they are fish safe, the water is filtered before it reaches the ice cube making machine which removes the chlorine.

You can use gel chillers, the plastic bag containing the gel is thick so it can take some abuse and if it happens to break the gel inside is composed mainly of water and carboxi methyl celulose which is non toxic and non harmful to the fish. Other gel type chillers are made with a very tough plastic container so they are very difficult to break and if they ever happen to break the content is the same found in plastic bag type containers.

If you use tap water to make your own chillers it 's better to use plastic bottles, soft drink bottles are made from PET plastic which is inert.

Basser89

I fished out of a aluminum boat for years that had a home made 80 quart Colemen cooler for a livewell. I installed a PVC pipe that ran across the top edge with spray holes to aerate the water, using the same pump that filled the cooler with a valve to switch the water flow.

However I also made a 8 foot stringer with safety clips that holds 2 bass and a weight to keep the bass in the lake water, down about 7 feet, as much as possible, using the livewell to transport bass in lieu of keeping them in the livewell. I still use the stringer to this day for keeping big bass alive until I want to release them. Some southern lakes with alligators you wouldn't try the stringer technique.

I keep a simple pool thermometer in the livewell and keep the water about 70 degrees during the summer, using chlorine free ice to cool it.

WRB

Raul, thanks for this post! I have learned a few more things I need to take into consideration.  

CJ

I read some misinformation here. Where does the 70 degree temp come from? I understand D.O., but don't understand how taking a fish from 85 degree water and putting the fish in 70 degree water isn't going to put the fish in shock. As far as adding ice..... by using an automatic ice maker to get your ice doesn't mean it's pure. Yes, there is a filter inline to the water supply, but this is normally just a screen. Newer refridgerator icemakers may, or may not have purifying filters. The problem with adding ice is that the chlorine burns the fishes gills and they can no longer absorb oxygen. An amount of chlorinated water below 20% of the livewell volume probably wont be enough to harm the fish. I don't think your carry enough ice to reach that amount.

As far as not recirculating warm water, this is just wrong. The purpose of recirculating is to infuse oxygen into the water. Aerators also do this. By continually recirculating your livewell + adding fresh water through the aeration pump and system periodicly you shouldn't lose fish.

I read some misinformation here. Where does the 70 degree temp come from? I understand D.O., but don't understand how taking a fish from 85 degree water and putting the fish in 70 degree water isn't going to put the fish in shock. As far as adding ice..... by using an automatic ice maker to get your ice doesn't mean it's pure. Yes, there is a filter inline to the water supply, but this is normally just a screen. Newer refridgerator icemakers may, or may not have purifying filters. The problem with adding ice is that the chlorine burns the fishes gills and they can no longer absorb oxygen. An amount of chlorinated water below 20% of the livewell volume probably wont be enough to harm the fish. I don't think your carry enough ice to reach that amount.

As far as not recirculating warm water, this is just wrong. The purpose of recirculating is to infuse oxygen into the water. Aerators also do this. By continually recirculating your livewell + adding fresh water through the aeration pump and system periodicly you shouldn't lose fish.

Let me put you an example of what is water circulation vs water aereation:

Many moons ago I had an aquarium tank in my bed room, it had a power canister filter and a power head to run the undergravel filter combined they were able to filter 10 times the volume of water contained in the tank in one hour ( circulation was 100 gal /hr ), you could hear the gurgling sound of bubbles being introduced by the power head via the hose you attached to the water output, as the powehead pumps out the water it sucks air via the hose. Lots of bubbles, lots of air, lots of happy fish and one fish tank owner suffering from insomnia cuz the gurgling sound that can calm you during the day can keep you awake at night.

In order to get rid of the gurgling sound I removed the air hose from the powerhead and rose the water level of the tank until the spray bar of the power filter was below water level, pretty smart, right ? 4 hours later I turn on the tank lights and all I see is fish desperately gasping for air at the surface of the water. The water recycling in the tank through the filters was exactly the same 100 gal/hr, however the aereation was not since I remove the hose and rose the water level leaving the spray bar under it.

Water circulation alone can increase the O2 level, that part is true, but it may not be enough to keep up with the demand of oxygen. You need to aereate the water and that can be done by a pump or can be done with the aerator, rising bubbles from the bottom displace the water ar they move and create current which causes the water to circulate. Nowhere it says that you shouldn 't recirculate the water, the only call of attention was made by WRB: The fact is most tournament fisherman believe putting bass in the livewell and recirculating water on a timely basis keeps the bass alive and in good health.

On the subject of temperature, you mention 80 degree water, 80 degree water where ? at 1 ft, 2, ft or 3 ft deep, becuase that 's about how deep you can find 80 degree water, below that it 's highly unlikely. So the bass you have just caught 6 ft deep was not in 80 degree water, it only rose to 80 degree water when you pulled it through it.

Pure water ? where you get water to be pure ? the water from the lake is not pure, the water from the ice comes from your municipal water supply and it 's been potabilized. Chlorine in levels found in potabilized water ( the water you drink) is toxic enough to cause damage to the fish if you keep them long enough in it, how long ? hours, and how much time is the fish going to be kept in the livewell ? hours. You may think that there is not enough chlorine but what you may think and what it really happens are two different things.

Bad stuff is happening while you have the fish in the livewell, but it happens at a level most times you can 't detect while the fish are in your possesion, yep, the fish made it to the weight in, but what about later when you packed your stuff and left ? you weren 't there to watch the livewell aftermath.

It 's simple basic good care of your catch not only for the time they are kept in the livewell but to increase the survival rate of the catch in the next days.

Another very important thing to remember is to keep your livewell cool. I know it has been mentioned here multiple times. The reason behind this is that there is a linear regression in the amount of oxygen in water with rising temperature. If that water gets around the high 80's there will be little to no oxygen left.