Don’t Be That Guy
by Ron Presley
As tournament anglers become educated on the subject of fish health, they tend to take it more seriously. Hot summer temperatures can make it hard to care for fish in a livewell. Oxygen levels are quickly depleted and the more fish in the well the quicker it goes. Actually, just one big fish can use up the oxygen pretty fast.
A dead fish can make the difference between being in or out of the money at a tournament, but more importantly a dead fish can’t be enjoyed by future generations of catfishers.
Most catfish anglers who are serious about bringing live fish to the weigh-in are also serious about releasing them in a condition where they will survive after being released. Tournament angler Wade Kaminsky is one angler who does everything he can to ensure a healthy release.
“When I first started fishing in 2013, I caught good numbers of small catfish,” recalled Kaminsky. “I took them home and cleaned them for the dinner table. It wasn’t until I caught a 30-pound class blue cat that I considered releasing the fish back (which I did). After watching my first tournament weight in I realized that some anglers’ livewells weren’t up to the task of keeping fish healthy. I knew I didn’t want to be in that category.
“Delayed mortality is real,” continued Kaminsky. “It happens if the fish are deprived too long in a stressful environment like a livewell.”
“When I bought my SeaArk I had full intentions of fishing tournaments,” he said. “Since I wanted to release my fish as healthy as possible. I spent countless hours searching the internet and everything I found said mortality and delayed mortality were due to low oxygen levels. As water temps get higher, oxygen levels go down and aren’t high enough to support stressed out fish. This starts happening around 70 degrees.”
The biologists at the first Mississippi River Monsters tournament in Memphis addressed this issue at the captains meeting. They stressed the importance of oxygen to the fish. They also tested livewells for dissolved oxygen content and reported it to the anglers. Then, they did their due diligence by transported the live catfish caught in the tournament back to the river in tanks that were equipped with oxygen dispersing units.
Kaminsky is a 100% believer in pure oxygen to relieve stressed fish. He points to the conservation-minded biologist at MRM and commercially transported fish for stocking purposes as evidence. They use pure oxygen in their processes. Adding oxygen is a huge step toward catfish health, but it is not the only thing.
“In my opinion,” concluded Kaminsky. “On top of having oxygen, a tournament livewell needs to have the ability to fill fast with fresh water, be able to recirculate, pump out if needed, and vent the gasses that can accumulate in the livewell. All these things work as a system. It’s this system that gives these fish a fighting chance to live on after being released.”
The air we breathe as humans contains about 21 percent oxygen. It is what keeps us alive. Fish need oxygen too, but they don’t have lungs so they take their oxygen from the water they live in. Scientist call it dissolved oxygen and the fish use their gills to get the oxygen from the water into their bodies.
Oxygen, in a fish’s world, is a rare and precious resource. Water has only a very tiny amount of the dissolved oxygen that fish require to live. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, most fish do well when the dissolved oxygen is five parts per million (ppm) or higher. When the dissolved oxygen is less than five ppm, they become uncomfortable and when it falls to two ppm or lower, they begin to suffocate and die.
In tournament situations where the dissolved oxygen content becomes too low, it can be remedied by adding pure oxygen. This is what many tournament anglers are doing to improve fish health at release and reduce mortality rates. It is certainly worth the effort to help maintain a trophy catfish population.
When you see an oxygen bottle strapped to an inconspicuous spot in the boat, that is evidence that the angler is doing his best to take care of the fish so they can be released as healthy as possible.
