Thanks for sharing always good to read some American fisheries society journal articles.

Did it say to dump some Mountain Dew on a bleeder in that article, I didn’t see it if they did. Maybe some hydrogen peroxide.

Imagine that- something the pros pitch to weekend anglers is just snake oil…

I'm gonna trust Tony at Sure Life.

Tell us more!

Google it. I am not trying to change anyone's mind. I know he has worked with the state regarding fish care etc and knows a heck of a lot more than I do about it. I trust his products.

Thanks man

Interesting, I've been playing this game for over four decades, never used an additive and the only fish I've lost were mortally wounded, gill damage from a hook. Todays livewell technology makes things even better, mine has the oxygenator system. I keep ice in the boat when I'm tournament fishing but rarely if ever, added it to the livewell.

I agree with Boyd Duckett regarding live wells and additives.

Well, trying to find that took me down several rabbit holes.

After reading this they tell you blood chemistry parameters (those that indicate stress) were not statistically different from control fish (no livewell additive used). There could be other benefits to additives such as improving the slime coat and incidence of post-release disease/mortality.

To quote the study, "Further, LMB retained in the live wells had greater blood glucose and lactate concentrations relative to baseline LMB, suggesting that fish did not recover from angling during retention in live wells." If you were caught and your freedom restricted, I would expect your stress level to increase but it is likely not going to kill you. I don't think anyone would expect "recovery" to occur while confined in a livewell. The ultimate measure is did the additive improve post release survival as that is what they are designed to do. Not tested.

They talk about locomotor activity increased (i.e., swimming activity as a sign of stress) after being released from a livewell, compared to controls, regardless if an additive was being used or not. Then you see this was measured for only 5 minutes post-release. What were they expecting in five minutes post-release? And for that matter using an additive they had no idea what was in it (i.e. a sedative or stimulant).

Last thing is they never named any of the products they used so how does this help the tournament angler other than to scare them to avoid all livewell products? Quote "We encourage the manufacturers of live-well additives to be transparent regarding the contents of their products and to provide evidence supporting their claims. Until that happens, anglers should exercise
great caution in using such products." Yet they not only didn't name the products and had no idea what was in them that could or could not be harmful to human health if you ate a fish subjected to an additive. Non-iodized salt is used routinely by the aquaculture industry for hauling fish. If you want to use something in the livewell and are afraid of what might be in additives salt seems to be accepted and routinely used by industry professionals for fish hauling.

I have no affiliation with any livewell additive company or product. I just don't think the study really added much to the question if livewell additives are effective at decreasing post-release mortality of tournament caught bass which again is what they are designed to do. It just created more confusion about effects of catch-and-release using livewells in tournaments and tries to scare people with the extremely unlikely scenario that you might eat a bass exposed to these products.

How about some research that helps the angler catch more fish and keeping them alive in a livewell when they want to do that?

I think there are more important things that can be done to reduce fish mortality, many of which most people do.

- schedule tournaments during the fall, winter, spring.
- ice
- proper fish handling (reducing exposure to carpet or dry hands, handling time etc.)

Among other things.

I haven’t seen anything that says additives have an adverse affect, so with that, smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em

This reminds me of lawn care. Mowing and watering among other things are way more important to a healthy lawn, but everyone is quick to get fertilizer as the fix . My neighborhood is littered with tru green app flags, and all of those lawns look like [censored] because nobody wants to actually take care of it.

I think the additives are a scam and I don't care who gets butt hurt about it. I also think the oxygen systems are a scam. If you have a good aerator and pump in some new water couple times a day along with knowing how to fiz you are probably just fine. July and August maybe a little ice. I have rarely lost fish outside of a iffy hook in tongue or gills and usually they are going nuts when I try and bag them. Just another piece of industry garbage to get dummys to spend money. You can add the stupid livewell vents to that list too.

I bought some livewell additive once. Used it once, killed the fish. Then the lid busted open and it dumped all in a storage compartment.

Haven’t lost fish before, or since.

…….well……there was this one time when I turned on the pumps and my partner “turned them on too”. (Off).

Ha, good story, the morale, “don’t fix something that isn’t broken”