How To Cull Bass

Hey folks Glenn May here with BassResource.com and one of the questions I see a lot on the forums and I get a lot of emails about, people wanting me to do a video on this, is how to cull. More importantly what is the equipment that I use and what's the methodology that we go through when we are culling fish. Now my wife and I, we fish a lot of tournaments. We've been doing it for a long time now, so we've gone through an iterative process of creating this way that we cull that works really well for us. I've been doing it for decades and decades and decades, I don't want to tell you how many decades but over the course of trial and error we've put together a system that works really well for us. So Let me walk you through that, maybe you'll pick up a few tips on your own that you can apply to your own style of fishing.

So the first thing I want to talk to you about is equipment. What I use, I use one of these here, okay. This is by, I'm not sure who makes this, I want to say Ardent. I believe it's Ardent, we're not sponsored by these folks at all. I'm not connected to them in anyway, so this isn't a sales pitch. But this is the one I use. And the reason being, let me walk you through. First of all I'm using one of these here, one of these clips. This is what you normally see on a stringer. Not using the kind of clip that latches onto the lower lip of the fish, and there is a couple of reasons why. First of all I've discovered that those don't stay on very well. Sometimes they do but sometimes they don't and I got tired of opening up the livewell lid and seeing three or four of these tags sitting on the bottom of the livewell. And then I've got to reweigh all the fish and retag them all over again.

They just didn't seem to hang on very well. And I've tried several different types thinking that it was maybe the design that I had and I would come across the right one, but I never did find one that actually really worked that well. In addition I've heard some people say that it causes infections and sores on their lips. And I've caught fish that have that. I can't say that that's the cause or that's the reason why. But when you think about it if you had a clamp vice grip stuck to your lip for 8 hours or more during the day at the very least that's going to leave a mark. But with the loss of circulation that could cause some damage at the very least short term, and I don't know if it's going to cause any other damage, some people claim it does. But, you know you don't really want to damage the fish, that's not the idea.

That said, this could damage the fish as well. You gotta be careful with it. What you do, first of all I don't stick it through the fishes mouth, through his jaw, I don't poke him with it. I don't want to cause another spot where he could get an infection, so don't jam it through his jaw. What I do is I put it up through the gill plate. Now before you freak out let me explain to ya how that works. You gotta put it on the very outermost part, right next to the gill plate and slide it up that part up to the jaw. Do not ever, ever, ever put it between the gills. Okay? You don't want to slide this between the gills. What happens is if you get this along the gill plate, like you're supposed to, it actually goes right up near the jaw away from the gills, and then this part is buoyant and it keeps it floating and it keeps it up away from those gills.

If you put it in between the gills you can cause damage. And you can hurt the fish. And I've heard some people say, "Well I don't use these because I've ruined their gills, damaged it, and they bled to death inside the livewell." I can guarantee you it was because it was put between the gills. And when you have a bunch of fish in the livewell they start fighting and they wrangle around and they start yanking on these things and, yeah, you can do some serious damage to the gills. So be extremely careful and put it on the outside part, and you'll be safe. I've never had a fish damaged by doing that, never killed one, never injured them, never even had them bleed by doing the proper way. So just be careful when you do it, and you won't have any problems.

Now let’s talk a little more about this. Look how this is connected right here. See that? That's a permanent connection. When you're looking for livewell tags make sure it's got a real solid connection down here. Because I've had some come undone on me in other models. So that's why I choose that.

Also this is a cable, notice that? It is a cable. This is not a string, a piece of cloth, anything like that. The ones that I've used that have had strings and cloth have had problems with it. First of all the lines get tangled up in each other, and also it can get stuck on a dorsal fin on another fish in the livewell, and even in their teeth. They've got those sharp little sandpaper type teeth, and those tags will get stuck in the other fishes mouth and then pretty soon you get this spaghetti tangled mess in the livewell and it's really hard to get it all untangled. Plus if they are using the clips like I told you on the lips. I think that is why some of them get pulled out, is because they have those cloth tags on them. So cable. And also notice this cable, I don't know if you can see it but it's got a plastic coating on it. It's a plastic sheath. That's extremely important.

I've had some that don't have that. What happens over time is as the fish are rubbing up against this it will start to fray. And little sharp little spikes will come out, which first of all really hurt when you grab them in your livewell you're gonna spike yourself. But it also, you know, you can poke fish as well and you can cause infection points. So the plastic sheathing, that's critically important.

Let's finally work our way back up here. See there is that connection again. I've had some of these where it's been like a plastic tube and it goes up inside the ball and it's tied off in a knot. Over time those knots will come undone, and no matter how hard you try to tie it and try to get it back in shape the knots will keep coming undone after that. It's just, it's a hassle. So don't get one that has a plastic tube that goes inside that ties in a knot. Trust me I've been there, done that, got the tee shirt.

Now lastly I want to talk about this ball here. Of course it's colored and we'll get to that in a second, why it's colored. But look at this. You got the numbers right here, and by pushing in the buttons on the side you can change those numbers to what you want. So you've got pounds and ounces. Awesome. Now you can mark the fish with what weights they are. But I use that as a back up system, let me explain why, well we'll get to that in a second.

Now lets talk about the culling. This is a dry erase board. This is from another kit that I had. I've told you I've had lots kits, so I can't even remember which one this came from. Hopefully the Arden one comes with something like this, I don't remember. Or you can go to an art store and get some dry erase board maybe they might have it at a hardware store I don't know.

Anyway dry erase board. You can see its got the colors here that match the colors of the tags. And then you want to use a grease pencil. Do not use a felt tip pen or a sharpie. I promise you that the first time you use a sharpie on this a drop of water will find it's way to this board and as soon as it hits this board it will erase everything you wrote on it. No matter how careful you are that always happens. It won't happen with a grease pencil. Again you can just get these at a hardware store. You can see mine is getting down there. It's about time for me to get a new one. But you write it on here and you won't have to worry about it getting wet. Alright, so lets get to how we actually do this.

First of all, when I store these in a bag I wrap them around on themselves. Wrap it around and I close this. So they're like this. This way they don't get tangled up. They're easy to get out. During the course of a tournament you don't want to mess with a tangled mess. So that's why I have it like this. What I do right at the very beginning of a tournament is I take one out and I put it inside my tackle storage area, hook undone. It's ready to go, because when you are ready to put this on the fish, you have one hand with the fish, and the other with this, and it's kinda hard to get these undone with one hand. So have it undone ready to go. Put in the fish, just like I told you, put it in the livewell. Notice I didn't say weigh them or mark them, there is a reason for that.

As good of anglers as we like to think we are, there are some days when we just don't get that sixth fish. So I'm not going to weigh any fish until I have to. I want to handle them as little as possible. So if the fishing is really tough especially I'm not going to worry about weighing them.

Once I get that sixth fish, now I'm going to weigh them, and first thing I'm going to do is that sixth fish one of these is going on it. Because this does have a little bit of weight to it and you want to compare apples to apples. So make sure you put a tag on it first. Now weigh all the fish and according to the color on here you put the weight on here and you mark it on the ball here so everything matches. Now I know when I look at this board I can quickly see that the smallest fish, one pound three ounces, say and he's yellow I can look in the livewell really quick, find the yellow ball, grab it and look.

If it says 1 pound 3 ounces. Hey, bingo. I know I have the right one. That saves me from making a mistake against myself, and throwing out the wrong fish. It's just a back up system. It identifies. It's a double check to make sure I don't accidentally throw the wrong fish out.

That is essentially how I do it. Then once I'm done I take that yellow one off and now it's unhooked and I put it back in the tackle storage area. It's unhooked, it's ready to go for the next fish. The next fish comes in the boat. Rinse, lather, repeat, and that's how we cull all day long. That's how I do it.

I hope those tips helped. I hope you can pick up a few of those and apply them to the way you fish. Have a great tournament. For more tips like this visit BassResource.com.