I recently served as the boat captain for my son Vegas at a Bassmaster Junior Series tournament in New Jersey. This is his last year fishing in the 14-and-under division. He won with just under 18 pounds. His next event will be the Bassmaster Junior National Championship on Clarks Hill Lake at the end of July.
His tournament took place on an “electric motor only” reservoir. Vegas competed out of a 12-foot Coleman Crawdad polyethylene johnboat I bought when I was 18 years old. We’ve rigged it with fishing decks, graphs and a livewell. A hand-control Newport electric motor is fixed to the bow and a three horsepower Newport motor hangs on the transom.
As a boat captain, I’m allowed to give advice, but I pretty much let Vegas do his own thing. He steers the boat while fishing and makes his own decisions about where to fish and which baits to use. He is as accomplished a fisherman at 14 as I was at 24.
I couldn’t be more proud of him. It was amazing to watch him excel at something I’m passionate about. He did a great job with fish care under staggeringly hot conditions. We must all strive to release healthy bass and avoid disastrous dead fish penalties.
My fish care system
Vegas has adopted a fish care system I’ve relied on for years in my tournaments. When the water’s cold in early spring, you can get away with running your recirculation pumps intermittently on the automatic setting. But when it gets warm, I keep my recirculation pumps running continuously. That’s critical.
I never want the water in my livewells to get above 80 degrees. I have a $10 pool monitor floating in my livewell that displays the water temperature. When the water gets too warm, I add ice.
I always bring two bags of ice aboard in warm weather. My Bass Cat Couger tournament rig has two coolers, and each one is large enough to hold a bag of ice. To keep two bags in Vega’s Crawdad rig, we stuff them into a flexible, inexpensive cooler bag that can be tucked out of the way.
I typically add ice four times a day, almost like four quarters in a football game. After the first quarter day of fishing, I add half a bag of ice. I add another half bag of ice at halftime, again after the third quarter and, finally, just before I make the run back to the weigh-in.
I also pump in fresh water every time I add ice. Then I switch back to the fulltime recirculation setting before I resume casting.
Livewell fish treatments
I’m a big believer in livewell treatments that increase dissolved oxygen, remove ammonia and other harmful substances and relax the bass to reduce their stress. I use an exceptional treatment made by BuzzerRocks. It’s a solid tablet about the size of an Alka-Seltzer. A package similar to a pill dispenser holds eight tablets.
Simply pop one tablet through the foil on the back of the pack and toss it into the livewell. There’s no measuring, no powdery mess and no stains on your boat.
BuzzerRocks also makes a Blood Stop Formula that helps stop bleeding caused by a wound on a fish’s gill, tongue, mouth or throat. It comes in a convenient little pump-spray bottle.
Vegas used it during his tournament on his biggest bass, a 6-3 largemouth that had taken a drop-shot hook too deeply. Two or three sprays of Blood Stop after removing the hook immediately stopped the bleeding.
Handling bass
The less time you spend weighing, culling, photographing and handling bass out of the water the better, especially when it’s hot. One of the most harmful things you can do is drop a bass on a sizzling hot boat seat or a dirty, abrasive carpet.
I attach a cull clip to any bass I intend to keep and quickly slip the fish into my livewell. Different color clips allow me to pull whatever bass I want to cull out of the livewell while leaving the rest of them in the water.
Fizzing bass
When you hook a bass in deep water, which is common in summertime, its air bladder expands and bulges when you pull it to the surface. This prevents the bass from righting itself in your livewell. It lies on its side, floats on top and wears itself out by struggling to stay upright.
You can amend this problem by removing air from the bladder with an inexpensive, surgically sharp fizz needle, which is what I do. Instructions for how to this can be found below, and there are more fizzing videos on Bassmaster.com.
If you’re not comfortable fizzing bass, buy weighted fin clips. You can attach one to the bottom fin of a bass or to a cull clip in the fish’s mouth. That pulls the bass to the bottom of the livewell and holds it upright. At Bassmaster tournaments, the guys who tend the release boats are good about fizzing the bass before they let them loose.
My fish care system may sound like a chore, but it becomes a natural process that doesn’t take much time. Ounces are important in any bass tournament, and we all want to see our fish swim away alive and healthy.
You can learn more about how I approach all aspects of bass fishing and much more at www.mikeiaconelli.com or www.youtube.com/c/goingike.
