Aerators ?

[Jmcfarland]

I have a 14 ft aluminum boat with no livewell. I am planned on using it to fish some tournaments this summer but have no livewell. I bought a big cooler hoping to turn it into a livewell. Do you guys think the small aerators that run on small batteries will keep the fish alive or not. I would rather do it that way then to run it off of the 12 volt trolling motor battery(because i need all the juice i can get). Any ideas or comments would be very helpful. Thanks

[blakstr1]

any aeration is better than none at all. a couple years back i kept a limit alive for 5 hours out on Mullet lake in a cooler with no aeration i kept bailing the warmer water and replaced it with lake water. it was a pain but it worked. the other guy with me kept his is a weigh bag hooked to one of the rod holders (older walleye boat) and 2/3 of the way in the water. He had 2 that looked pretty rought at the end of the tournament but neither of us had dead fish at the weigh-in. get creative and it will work out for you.

[scooter]

If you can rig up a system to recirculate the water is good it keeps water fresh and aeroated at the same time'

[djkimmel]

The main tricks will be to keep circulating the water for some oxygen gain, and to change the water often by baling out or pumping half to 2/3s out and pumping in fresh.

A regular pump with a hose extension makes this easier and faster. I used a PVC pipe in the end of a hose with a cap the I hung at the top of the cooler. The PVC pipe has 6 or 7 small holes drilled the sprayed water under pressure.

To pump out our in, I just removed the PVC pipe and aimed the flexible hose.

[Jmcfarland]

Thanks guys. I have heard that the pros use ice in there livewells and wondered about that too. I will have an areator but I will probably end up bailing water due to weight (boat gets a little slower everytime i add stuff .

[djkimmel]

I keep a laundry jug in my boat with the cap on and the bottom cut off. The handle makes it a great scooper.

You can ice your bass, but you don't want to create shock in bass by making the temperature more than 10 degrees different. I rarely have used ice since we don't have the same high water temperature problems in a lot of our lakes, especially in the north country up by you.

Get some Please Release Me or Catch and Release powder too. It helps calm your bass and keep their contaminants down. Don't overdose them though and I'm not sure about that Rejuvenade. I probably need to look into it a little more when I have time, but I want mellow bass, not hyper bass.

The keys to healthy bass are good quality water, good oxygen levels (harder to keep safe the warmer the water) and low stress.

[pitchnflip]

I have used a cooler and small aerator for the past two seasons and have not have any problems. However, I did run mine off of a 12 volt battery. I used that battery for the aerator and as a back up. I did check on the fish a couple of times an hour, and I did bail fresh water in and out as needed.

Pat

[blakstr1]

JMCFARLAND-

I just ran across a icechest aerator for $19.88 at BPS. It is shown on their website under the Memorial Day sale.