Everstart Fish Kill

Then what was the point in making it a cull tournament if they wanted to study post weigh in mortality?

I was fishing a tourny on pool 5A and had a Wis Dnr check our lic and fish.Do you believe that this “officer”,did not know what Catch and Release is and how it work,what it was for? I had to take the time to explain it to him My 2 cent is that if the Dnr understood what the heck they were doing or what kind of steps the tourny dircector and anglers are taking to preserver the fish and habitat,there would not be a problem.

The culling issue with bass has been around for twenty years. The DNR has fought it tooth and nail. Tournemnt orginizations gave up fighting the DNR and went to the Wisconsin legislature where one of the key issues was that there was no proof of fish mortality in Bass tourneys as there was in salmon, walleye and Musky events. The legislature directed the DNR to conduct studies on mortality. Apparenty they did not direct them to do it well. Or the other way to look at it is that the DNR has provided their own proof of fish mortality.

B.C. how’d you get that gremlin with a gun that’s awsome im going to need that for this years deer season!

I copied this from the federation site but htis is how a test should be done. They put the 40 fish in seperate 1.3 acre poncs. Sorry it’s kind of long.

Catch And Release GF&P Study Proves Out’ Success Of B.A.S.S. Catch
And Release By Kimberly Kolden [email protected]

A recent South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks study illustrated how
successful bass tournaments are at catching high amounts of
largemouth bass and returning them to their habitats no worse for
wear.
The study, conducted during the B.A.S.S. Northern Divisional
tournament at Lewis & Clark Lake two weeks ago, focused on whether
delayed mortality set in on tournament fish. The study was conducted by Todd St. Sauver, the regional fisheries manager for southeastern South Dakota. Dave Lucchesi, a regional fisheries biologist, and Dave Willis, a SDSU professor, consulted on the design of study.

“Nationwide studies over the years have shown that B.A.S.S.
tournament mortality in general is pretty low,” St. Sauver said.
“Our study confirmed that … out of the 120 tournament bass, we had five moralities.”

The study began the day before the tournament started. A Game Fish
and Parks crew went out on Lake Yankton and, using electrofishing,
captured 120 largemouth bass for the study’s control group, St.
Sauver said. After the tournament began, the first 120 largemouth
brought in by fishermen were put into the GF&P trucks like the rest of the fish, but instead of being returned to Running Water by Springfield, they were placed in one of three 1.3 acre holding ponds at Gavin’s Point Fish Hatchery and Aquarium, St. Sauver said. Because the fish were brought in by random fishermen and were of random size (at least twelve inches), no random selection was needed for the tournament sample.

“We put 40 control fish and 40 tournament fish in each of the 1.3
acre ponds,” St. Sauver said. “To our knowledge, that’s one thing
that other studies haven’t done. Most studies hold the fish in
cages, raceways or tanks … and that has always been a major
criticism of these studies because that holding procedure may
contribute to their mortality.”

The ponds were left full until Friday, then were slowly drained
until Monday when the fish were removed.

“We had 100 percent survival on our control fish, and 4.2 percent
delayed mortality for the tournament fish. We only lost five
tournament fish, two were dead immediately. One we found laying dead on bottom of pond. Two just disappeared; we assume they had died in the pond and then a raccoon or something carried them away before we got to them on Monday.” St. Sauver also said that weather plays a big part in whether the bass survive, and noticed on Wednesday, the windy first day of the Yankton tournament, that the fish brought back seemed more stressed than on subsequent days. “That’s not too bad for as rough of weather that they came back in,” said Kyle Helseth, president of the Sought Dakota BASS Federation. “That was a tough day.”

St. Sauver said that because of the warmer water and windy surface
conditions, the fish were more stressed.
“The live wells can be likened to being inside a washing machine and leaving it on for eight hours. They go through a lot,” he said. “B.A.S.S. can be commended for their efforts on treating the bass during the weigh-in,” St. Sauver added. “The fish never leave the water, they’re transferred from the boat’s live well to bags
containing water, and then they’re put into holding tanks all along the weigh in process. They treat the fish as well as they can be treated.

“Walleye tournaments have a little ways to go to catch up to the
B.A.S.S. guys,” he noted.
During the tournament, GF&P hauled 894 fish up to the Running Water area and released them. “Bass are a territorial, habitat-oriented fish, and when they are removed that far from their home territory … their survival would probably be considerably less if they were released in that area and left to fend for themselves,” St. Sauver said. “That’s why South Dakota B.A.S.S. asked us to transport the fish back up into that area to give them a better chance for survival. We figured as long as we were going to be hauling and handling these bass anyway, why not conduct this little study to contribute to the general knowledge of B.A.S.S. tournaments and tournament mortality?”

Helseth was more than happy with the results of the study.
“The study proves that if you keep them in a good aerated live well and keep oxygen to them, you can keep them alive,” he said. “We thought we knew what the results would be, but it’s always nice to have the science prove it out.”
Helseth also said it was important to have the South Dakota GF&P
there for credibility so that non-resident teams didn’t think the
South Dakota anglers were fishing where the fish were being released. “I didn’t want to know (the release location) and I didn’t want anybody else to know after they took their initial 120 fish,” Helseth said. “I didn’t want to know, just get them upstream. To this day I still don’t know. … It just makes it fair.”

Greetings, it appears that many, many questions need to be asked and answered about the study methods. But to take what may be seen as an un-popular position, Tournament mortality is to be expected. At the last BassMasters Conservation Directors Workshop I attended in Florida of this year; we were counseled to begin using a 25% mortality rate as the norm. It is unrealistic to expect mortality to be much less then this. I’m still trying to adjust to the figure and would like to think it is less here in MN or WI. But the # of dead fish brought in and # of dead fish found on shore is much lower then this 25%, but to think there isn’t more is unrealistic. I can’t tell you how many guys will argue with me about this figure, but it comes from an average of many tournaments. And while it is a statistic, it has validity. What then do we need to do? First educate anglers on how to handle deep hooked fish, then start working with tournament organizers to better care for fish, in-water weigh-ins will likely become the norm in the future. As anglers begin to accept this 25% figure and quite trying to believe that it doesn’t exist.

Mortality is especially problematic during the warm summer months. With warm river temps higer mortality from angling (tournament or otherwise) is expected. Unfortunately, how you measure or estimate this mortality isn’t easy. Also, the info provided above may or may not be accurate — I would find out more of the details of the study performed before drawing any conclusions.

On a side note — one of the posts above mentioned not feeding control fish. That’s not necessarily inappropriate. Feeding a fish can actually result in greater stress. Fish held in temporary confinement often are not fed to avoid additional stress and hopefully reduce mortality.

I was there at that divisional and I referenced those results in a thread similiar to this one a month back. Thats why I was so suprised to see and hear how they conducted this so called study at the Everstart. How could the results out in South Dakota be so different then back home on the river I asked myself? Both are man made resevoir systems with current areas and no current areas. Fish were caught in both areas in both tournaments. Well, my question has been answered.
Great post Scooter. I was wondering were that information was.

Buzz,

What you say is certainly true, but it’s also important to note that mortality isn’t limited to tournament fishing. On any given day there are people out there catching and releasing Bass and some of those fish are going to die. We all need to learn as much as we can about proper handling, unhooking, etc.

Rootski

Quote:

---

B.C. how’d you get that gremlin with a gun that’s awsome im going to need that for this years deer season!

---

Here is the link to it fish27: Hunting Graemlin

When was the SD study done? More importantly….what was the water temp?

The SD study was done Last Sept. 12-17th. Not sure on the water temp but if I remeber correctly it was within 5-7 degrees.

Most importnantly…….Was how the fish were stored during the test period. Holding ponds with adequete oxygen vs. cages that they’re banging their heads off of and was there enough oxygen and space?

Well i sent a letter to the editor hope it helps. I cant believe the irresponsibility of the paper in publishing these numbers with out doing some of there own homework. Keep us updated on how this turns out.

When the case was being made to the legislature to allow culling in Bass Tournements there was a bunch of documentation supplied to the legislature and the DNR. Is anyone out there that can confirm that the South Dakota study was in the information supplied?

You want to know if that SD study was supplied to the legislature? If so, I’m not sure. Scotty, you know???

I just had a good conversation with Robert Vanderson from FLW Outdoors. They are WELL aware of the study results and the printed article in Sunday’s Tribune. Robert mentioned that Dave Washburn from FLW does have a Stance on this issue, but they aren’t quite sure when they are going to make a press release. It’s a matter of correct timing, especially since this whole issue has become political.

From my conversation, I can tell you that they are none the less pleased from the release, or how the entired study was conducted.

I think we need to keep doing what we’ve been doing, and that’s writing letters and making calls on this….

Mike Hoffman, President of the Wisconsin Bass federation posted on the federation site that both the South Dakota Study and one done in Tulsa earlier in the year at the Bas fedeartion Championships had been forwarded to the DNR.

Even so, what do any of these studies have to do with culling? I think the mortality rates of fish that had been in a livewell all day, then put through the weigh in process may be different than a fish that may have only spent an hour or so in a livewell.

I just got done emailing the people slop listed. I hope others will or have done the same. I basically asked them to do more research and to question the way the study was done and do a follow up article with some second opinions and outside views.

I sent a letter to the list slop gave us but I don’t beleive it will get any results. They will get all these emails and they will stop reading them after awhile.

I e-mailed both people at the Lax Tribune. One gave me a repsonse that said thank you. The other one thanked me for my comments, and that they have received a huge amount of feed back and that they will continue to cover the story. He also said that they will be doing a story on the LMBV September 1st. I am not sure if they think the fish kill is related to that, or if they are just trying to run another story.

Quote:

---

He also said that they will be doing a story on the LMBV September 1st. I am not sure if they think the fish kill is related to that, or if they are just trying to run another story.

---

Sounds like they’re trying to kick us while we’re down. Appears they are really stirring the “public vs. bass tournaments” pot .

yeh that was my thought, or possible they r trying to cover up their error by saying it was LMBV, who knows….

In the reply I got they made it sound like the added strees of tourney conditions were causeing bass with LMBV to die. We will have to see how this turns out sounds pretty shaddy to me.

Jerry Davis and Bob Lamb replyed to me only saying they received my email. They also mentioned the LMBV article that will be printed in thursday’s Lax tribune. Could someone please post that for me.

Just go to lacrossetribune.com on Thursday and read it

Thanks

Saw this on the Wisconsin BASS Federation message board, hopefully we can get some answers.
http://www.igooutdoors.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=10;t=000600

You guys NEED to go out and read this response…It has some interesting facts

http://www.igooutdoors.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=10;t=000600

Here is a brief excerpt from the post by BJ Schmalz

3) Now for the tough one. Has the department discovered why all those fish died in LaCrosse? We are hearing that most or all of the fish collected in the study were infested with Large Mouth Bass Virus? Would the combination of being handled and kept in a pen with LMBV be the cause for the kill? Could it be possible that someone may have poisoned these fish? I know that sounds kind of far fetched, but is that something you guys have looked into?

3) Answer: The best answer I can give regarding what killed the bass at the FLW event is that LMB died from combined effects of a series of stressors (handling, holding, high water temperature, and LMB virus). SMB the same, minus the LMB virus. 18 dead LMB from the net pens were tested for LMB virus and all had the virus. 2 SMB were tested and were negative for the virus. Tests were conducted by the LaCrosse Fish Health Lab (US Geological Survey).

Since the event I have been working hard to get some better answers and there is some relatively new research conducted by Dr. Harold Schramm (Mississippi State University) and Gene Gilliland (Oklahoma Dept. of Wildlife Conservation) and others that may help explain what happened. They studied LMB tournament mortality in waters known or suspected of having LMB virus and found very similar results that we found. Research shows that LMB virus can be passed from infected fish to healthy fish in one hour, when confined together. LMB virus most likely compromised the fish’s immune system and makes them susceptible to other diseases (like columnaris, which is a common cause of Wisconsin fish kills – naturally). Most likely, some proportion of LMB had the virus. Holding them in confinement (live wells, release boat tanks, and net pens) allowed the virus to be passed to otherwise healthy fish, resulting in the unusually high LMB mortality. Because of the LMB virus, it is impossible to determine the mortality from the tournament. The net pens definitely provided an environment that allowed the virus to be spread, independent of whether the fish were tournament-caught or electrofished by WDNR (which helps explain the high mortality of reference fish).

Bass were also found floating dead in the Black River area (close to the weigh-in location) by a WDNR warden after the event. We can not be certain what those fish died from.

Below is a link to Dr. Schramm’s web page and a report that can be downloaded and printed (although it is large).

Dr. Harold Schramm publications

Schramm, Jr., H.L., J. Grizzle, L. Hanson, G. Gilliland. 2004. Improving Survival of Tournament-Caught Bass and the Effects of Tournament Handling on Largemouth Bass Virus Disease. Completion Report. 134 pp.

We did not look into the potential poisoning of fish. However the pens were located in a secure location. Land access was gated and private. The LMB virus seems to be a ‘smoking gun’.

SMB mortality was estimated as well. Those results are actually pretty good. Reference fish died at a rate of 27% and tournament SMB at a rate of 40%. Thus estimated tournament mortality of SMB was approximately 13%. Given the high water temperatures, that is actually relatively low for SMB.

Please let me know if this makes sense or if I can clarify anything. There is a lot of information. I can provide anyone with references, etc… if desired.

Also, the BASS web page has a great list of references for LMB virus (click link below).

ESPN/BASS LMB virus fact sheet

Thanks for the questions.