By Louie Stout
We’re about a month away from the start of the bass tournament season and you can bet there will be a lot more forward facing sonar units deployed by Michiana anglers.
Understandbly so. The new technology is amazing and opens a dimension in bass fishing that has never explored.
But it also has exposed a vulnerable population of bass on our lakes that will require additional protection by anglers.
Tournaments have all required fish be weighed alive so they can be released back into the water.
With FFS, that may not be enough.
That’s especially true on deep lakes where large bass will school and suspend in deep water. Smallmouth are extremely vulnerable, especially on lakes like Gull and Paw Paw and other deep lakes where FFS is so effective.
If you fished many derbies last year, you probably saw – as I did – fish that were released after a weigh-in – suffering from barotrauma. It’s a stressful condition fish suffer when caught deep and rise too rapidly to the surface.
While many anglers believe that those fish will recover, there is scientific evidence that they won’t.
When the air bladder overly inflates from a fish being brought to the surface rapidly, the bladder puts pressure on the bass’ other organs, including the heart, and the blood supply is slowed, hence the fish succumbs.
One solution to this is “fizzing,” the art of inserting a need in a specific spot of the fish and allowing air to release so the fish can resume its natural balance and return to a safe depth.
Some anglers either don’t fizz their fish properly or at all.
That’s why Michiana Outdoors News is urging tournament directors to consider rule changes about the fish they’ll accept as being “alive” at the scales.
Scott Crocker of SMAC plans to take action by requiring the fish he receives at the scales to be upright and be able to swim away naturally when released. He plans to impose stiff penalties for those that don’t.
That means anglers who catch bass suffering from barotrauma must be fizzed promptly so they are upright in the livewell before going to the scales.
Bassmaster Conservation Director Gene Gilliland, a former Oklahoma fisheries biologist, says the fish should be fizzed in the first 10 to 15 minutes after being caught.
“Waiting to do it increases the chance of internal damage, restricted blood flow and possible delayed mortality,” he says. “Waiting until you get to the weigh-in is too late.”
As anglers, we have a responsibility to obtain a fizzing kit (available online), learn the proper fizzing technique and do it promptly.
If you took time to learn how to use your FFS, you can learn how to fizz. Listed below are two videos with specific details, one for largemouth and another for smallmouth.
https://www.bassmaster.com/conservation-news/video/fizzing-smallmouth-bass/
https://www.bassmaster.com/conservation-news/video/how-and-where-to-fizz-largemouth-bass/