I have never fished tournaments before but will be fishing all the CAT tournaments this year. I'm looking for any information about how to cull. I have two livewells on my boat and own a berkley digital scale. Any advice would be appreciated.

Use a culling beam for the final decision.

Keep your biggest 7-9 fish in one livewell and another 7-9 fish in the other livewell in case some die. Throw everything thing else on ice!

Use your scales to get the fish separated by weight but for close weights use a culling beam to decide. See you at Lavon. You'll enjoy the CAT events!

Attach a float to your first 7 fish and then cull off into the other well. Try to remember the color of your smallest fish as you go. Saves time.

These floats work well and my other ones have a adjustment on them to show the weight of each fish as you go.

Ernest those work great, more so for more durable fish as Bass, I feel like that would add more stress to a delicate fish as a crappie lugging something around in the live well.So we decided not to go that route. We do not over load the livewell as mentioned and cull by scales and or balance beam. We also run the pure oxygenator in my recirculative bait tank to help our catch. Summer months can still be tough with very little handling. We freak out all day long as some fish are always floating on there side in the 30 gal tank. But when the end of the day is there and we are filling the weigh-in bags they are very lively (so far).

We are lucky enough to have 2 livewells. So, we keep the large fish in one and the small fish in the other. At the end we use the teeter board to ensure we get the heaviest ones in the weighin bag.

We've tried all sorts of methods and gizmos but, haven't found any that are effective for our style of fishing.

Here's what I use. The 'scale' not only weighs the fish, but also tells you what color to put on that fish. Then it remembers that weight/color. As you catch one larger and weigh it, it will tell you exactly which one to cull and replace the color on the new fish. You never lose an ounce (or fraction thereof). Pretty slick set-up. And the clip and colored line that clips on the fish, doesn't weigh anything, so the crappie never gets stressed. Available at BPS. Bring money.

Guy Thats a neat new system I havent seen, looks to work slick. Problem in my dept is Im still in the no money dept. Old school will never die(until I get another job)

Guy,

Shannon and I have used that system before but, found that the scale wasn't very accurate at all. We'd weigh a fish and it would say to replace "orange" with the new fish. However, you'd teeter the current orange with the new suggested orange and the old would weigh more. That happened more than once and decided against continuing to use it.

The concept of the system is excellent but, the accuracy of the scale wasn't up to snuff.

Maybe we just got a bad unit or something but, we aren't a big fan of the berkley scale.

Thanks for the information. After reading about it I'm going to buy the kit Guy is using. My current scale is the 50# one and will not read as accurate as the FS15 which Berkley says is accurate to 1/4oz. I think that and a culling beam will be the tools I need. Thanks again for the input, It's everyones willingness to share and not hoard information that makes this crappie forum great.

I was typing the above up as Greg_G was posting. I guess I may wait to see if anyone else has experience with the Berkley FS15. If you have,please comment on you experience with it.

Sorry to hear that Greg. I've not had any problems, but I do have a "back-up system"...a BPS balance beam. When in doubt, check with the beam.

Simpleman, don't let my opinion taint your decision on buying that scale. We're just a couple of computer engineering goobers that might not understand all the complex details of how to work that fancy thing.

Well thats good info. form good fishermen but me I just hope to catch 7 and after that I it's not usually to hard to figure out what to weigh.

I usually just weigh all 5 of mine. Kidding aside I like the concept behind the one Guy uses. If nothing else the markers look fish friendly.

Culling beam is what I've always used.

Inny- minny- miney- moe!
Works fer me.