Putting ice in a live well

[livemusic]

I catch n release but also sometimes keep some to eat. If you were gonna put your crappie or bream catch in a livewell as you fish, would you put ice in there to cool the water? Was thinking of adding a frozen bottle of water. I freeze jugs of water. Or are crappie/bream more hardy than bass? This is for hot summer days. I've heard of people throwing a bag of ice in a livewell when bass tourney fishing. Most of my trips are 3-5 hours length. Starting to get real hot now, curious if this is needed or even helps. FWIW, I have oxygenators and also have 'recirculate' livewell function. I am new to livewell use; in the past, I'd most often just ice 'em down as I fish.

EDIT: The purpose of the ice in the livewell is to lower the water temp to help fish survival during your fishing so they don't die quickly and then start spoiling. So far my oxygenated and recirculating livewell has done well but now the surface water temp is 94 degrees!

[DockShootinJack]

I usually just run the livewell pumps. It only takes a few fish feed me and the wife. I can tell pretty quick if I am going to have enough to keep. Then I get them on the ice to keep the neat fresh and firm. I need to start freezing in smaller batches anyway.

[Central Minn]

If we're keeping,we have a medium size cooler with a heavy plastic bag with about 5-10lbs of ice in it.Bottle water/night crawlers in the top of the bag,catch a fish lift the bag up throw the fish in the bottom of the cooler set the bag on top of the fish....repeat. Ice cold fish to fillet when we get home.

[shadow]

In Louisiana, I would STRONGLY recommend at least iceing down the live well at this time of year. I usually put mine straight on ice as I don't have a live well.

[Grainraiser]

I don't even try to keep them alive in the summer. I put a bag of ice in my livewell and any fish going home with me go underneath the ice bag.

[Ketchn]

we threw 2 1/2 gallons frozen like rock in ours yesterday afternoon and hit it for less than 3 hours and all 20 crappie in there ,were prettier than when they came out of the lake . it was right at 100 outside and the lake was 85 .....
of course you may want to vary the ice block numbers and size , but we do it all summer in one of the boats we ride in .
makes for some really frisky happy crappie when you get to the ramp for sure

[M R Dux]

My client fish go on ice. For tournaments, we use a 55 qt cooler, treat it well with GJuice, and ice it to 65 degrees. We don’t lose fish with this set-up but we are dealing with 7 -10 crappie.


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[spindle]

The fish I'm keeping goes in a cooler with ice. It keeps them fresh and makes them easier to clean too.

[cnette01]

I use 3 frozen jugs that used to hold cranberry juice to keep the livewell water cold. As long as the catch is 10 or so, they will usually live just fine until I get home from a half day trip. If I have a great day and load the livewell not so much. But it keeps the fish cold until I clean them.

[chaunc]

I put the plug in my empty livewell then place the biggest bag of ice I can get in it. As fish are caught, put them in the livewell with the ice. Ice will melt some as the day goes on and keep that fish good and cold.