Live Well Question

[Hitek]

I recently purchased a Ranger Fisherman, about 5 weeks ago, after fishing out of a Stratos for 4 years. I have never had a fish die in the Stratos (except the one fish that swallowed the jighead). We have heard of people having problems keeping fish alive and never knew what all the fuss was about, until this past weekend. We had a tournament this past weekend and had caught several fish early. One of them died, the biggest of course, and the rest seemed to be fine. At about 1:00 we found some good fish, caught 4 over 1.25lbs in about 30 minutes and lost a couple more. About 10 minutes later all four fish were on there side in the live well. Instead of fishing the rest of the tournament we decided to try and make it to weigh in before the fish died, one did not make it. The fish were caught in 9 ft of water on the bottom and we had about 20 fish in the livewell (.75lb - 1 lb). Any idea what might have caused the problem? I have always heard that the fish live better in a Ranger live well but I am not impressed so far!

[Tim The Lippa Rippa Mon]

20 fish is a lot of fish in hot weather for any live well. especially when you have some hogs in there along. Did you have the recirculator turned on? I would suggest investing in some of those Keep alive tablets, or what ever them things are called. We also drop a 2 gallon bucket on a 10' rope over the side to pull up cooler water from the lake to dump in our live wells too. Seems to help on hot days.

Since it is a new boat, I kind of wonder if maybe there may of been some cleaning product or adhesive residues left behind in the live well or it's aerator/recirculator lines.

Sorry to hear about your mis-fortune. We lost a tournament from the same thing happening to use out of a Bass Tracker's live well. Several people told me it was because they have no insulation in them, and they heat up too fast. I don't know what happend for sure, but it sucks when that happens!

Better luck to you in the future.

<,"}/>{ Rippa

[Hitek]

20 fish should not be too many for that big live well. I had the aerator running the whole time and the water did not seem to be very warm. It was very frustrating though!

[Moose1am]

I would flush the entire livewell out and flush any pipes or hoses as well. Flush them out for about 15 minutes to get rid of any residual bleach or cleaning chemicals that may have been left in the system.

If this does not solve the problem and you have the recirculator working in good order and it's mixing the water good to keep plenty of dissolved oxygen in the water then it could be a bacterial problem.

Might want to make up a 10% bleach solution with some TriSodium Phospate cleaner and then clean the entire system with this solution. Mix 1 part bleach to 10 parts water. So one cup bleach to ten cups water. Or one bucket of bleach and ten buckets of water. Let the bleach sit in the live well for about 30 mintues and then flush it out after draining the system. Flush it out with plenty of good clean water.

This should kill any bacterial or algae that is in the pipes and get rid of an plant or animal contamination. Bleach works wonders killing bacterial and algae.

You said that the water temp was not too hot. Take a thermometer with you and check the water temp and see what it reads. If it's above 75 deg or up to 80 deg that is too hot.

Another thing to check on is the water intake for your system. Can you pump water in from the lake though a hole in the boat somewhere? I have a hose that runs form my live well to the pump in the back of the boat and from the pump there is a short 1" diam hose that goes though the transome below the water line. I pump in fresh water at about 1ft below the surface and then the water fills the livewell. There is a drain line at the top of the live well that acts as an overflow pipe. This pipe leads to a flex hose that goes to the back of the boat and out the bilge pump hole

One thing you might do is to to walmart and buy one of those Rule Live Well pumps. The one I like runs on 12v dc current and I can plug it into my cigarette lighter and get power to it. I put a short 1ft long pvc pipe in the outlet of the pump and then attached a long 10ft long vinyl tube to the end of the pvc pipe. This way I can use the pump to draw water from ten feet down below the waters surface where it's much cooler that the surface water. You can get a temp diff of about 10 deg or more when you get that colder deeper water.

In the summertime I catch a lot of fish in 20 to 25 ft of water and I know those fish are stessed out when I yank them out of that deep water and put them in water under very little pressure and hot water at that. The fish are acclimated to living at almost TWO ATMOSPHERE of pressure at 25 ft. When you bring them to the surface they are only under ONE ATMOSPHERE. That's 29" of water on the barometer or 760 mm of mercury. That is a huge pressure change and any gases that are dissolved in the blood stream of the fish will instantly form bubbles in the blood vessels of the fish. The fish can dive down fast but it take them time to surface again. And remember that the longer you remain under water the more saturated the blood stream becomes with gases. Gases dissolve better when they are in cold water and under high pressure. Take a 2liter bottle of coke and put it in the refrigerator before you open it and get it nice an cold. If you leave it out in the warm room and shake it up and then open it up you will see the dissolved gases coming out of solution really quick.

It's best to bring the fish up slowly if possible and if not then just put them on ice when you get them up to the surface when you intend to take them home to eat. Or else get them into water that's cold and matches the temp of the water depth that they came out of.

If you are not running the boat fast and only using the trolling motor to power the boat across the lake or pit then you can add a short 10ft long flex hose to the live wells water intake hole. I put a pvc elbow that has a varialbe sized pipe that fits inside the intake hole to my live well water pump. Then I stick that elbow into the hole in the boat transom with the outside part of the pipe elbow pointing downward. I then slip a flexible vinyl plastic tube that is about 6" long over the end of the pipe elbow. Then I add a 5 ft long pvc pipe who's outside diameter fits inside the vinyl tube. This allow the long pipe to kick up if it hits something below the water. I only do this in the summertime when I fish an electric motor only lake. I can't do this at Patoka or other lakes as I would take off and forget that I had this attached to the boat and it would surely come off and I would lose the setup. If you go slow then it will say on the boat. But when I do use it I can bring up much cooler water into my live well and the fish seem to like that better. They usually can survive all day long in the live well and I am talking about 25 crappie in there. I have to remember to run water though the system ever 30 minutes. But then I have a toggle switch up on the front of my boat that I can turn on with my left foot while I am sitting in the casting chair up at the front of my boat. This turns the water on and pumps in fresh water into the livewell. The excess flows out the overflow drain. I could rig up a timer someday but have not got around to that yet.

Cold water holds more dissolved oxygen than hot water and it's better for the fish.

And remember that tap water may have chlorine in it which can kill the fish too. Let any tap water sit for a few hours and the chlorine will dissapate.

20 fish should not be too many for that big live well. I had the aerator running the whole time and the water did not seem to be very warm. It was very frustrating though!

[Papermouth62]

I Have An Idea That You Might Want To Try,
Try Filling A Gallon Jug Like A Milk Jug Up With
Water And Freezing It Then Just Sit It In The Livewell
(lid On) It Will Last Most Of The Day And Will Keep The Water Temp Down About 10 Ti 15 Degrees Cooler..

[Mrs. Crappie Stalker]

Ditto the ice in the livewell idea. We use soda bottles - 2 liter bottles for the livewell and 20 oz. for the minnow bucket. Works well!

[crappieseeker]

We fished a 7 hour tournament on a very hot day, with temparatures in the nineties. We caught our fish within the first hour and kept them in the live well for the remainder of the time. During weigh in, our fish were the most lively fish to be weighed in. You couldnt get them to sit still to weigh them, they were bouncing all over the place. We kept the recirculator on and it worked fine. We were in a Bass Tracker. I dont think the live well was insulated, but the fish lived just fine. Was not my boat, but I was impressed with the live well.

[whizkids]

I am not a Ranger owner but I have seen enough of them in tournaments to believe they have a good livewell system. If other teams were not losing fish I would thing there had to be a malfunction. Make sure there is fresh water pumping in and not just livewell water recycling. I close my livewell off and pump fresh water constantly and let it run out the livewell overflow. Unless there was a chemical reaction ( which I doubt as I think all would have died, at least all of the first ones you caught) there may to be a problem with fresh water resupply.
Keep alive powder and froze water bottles will help survival but unless there was a big difference in the water temp where the fish were holding and the temp of the water in the livewell those things shouldn't be needed. I fish a river lake where there is almost constant water generation. In that case the surface water on hot days and water temp where the fish are holding can have enough difference that some cooling of the livewell water is necessary. It is really a bummer to lose fish when 100/ths of a pound are important.

[dave]

sounds like the water was to warm,try some ice every 2 hours.