Getting the stink outta the livewell?

So yesterday I can home with a few nice eater walleyes, cleaned them as usual. This morning, the FW said something REALLY stinks in the garage. First thought was BK’s missing can of bacon flavored Spam, nope, that wasn’t it.
After further inspection, I found that one of the ‘eyes coughed up some of his lunch in the well, and it was WELL on it’s way to the other side.
What do you guys use to disinfect you livewells? I normally use lots of fresh water, maybe a small touch of bleach. I’m concerned about the lingering after effects of bleach on the next batch of fish I put in it though.

Any recommendations?
Thanks,
Don

I have been using a pretty hefty mix of bleach/water dumped in my well after trips for a couple years now. I plug the well, dump some in and swish it around then put a pail under the drain and unplug the well. Then just dump the pail outside.
I have not noticed any bad effects, my well self fills a bit as its lower than the water line and then sloshes around as i drive on the water.

Bleach would work if you flush the tank well afterwards. I just wouldn’t allow the highly concentrated mix to go down the driveway. I would dump the 5 buckets down the sink to be certain it doesn’t harm any wildlife.

You could also try a mix of 1 part baking soda to 2 parts vinegar if you want to be more Eco-friendly.

munchy wrote:

Bleach would work if you flush the tank well afterwards. I just wouldn’t allow the highly concentrated mix to go down the driveway. I would dump the 5 buckets down the sink to be certain it doesn’t harm any wildlife.

You could also try a mix of 1 part baking soda to 2 parts vinegar if you want to be more Eco-friendly.

I use baking soda with good results,never mixed it with vinegar, but I will try that next time.

I work for a company that makes pickled herring and we go through about 6,000 gallons of vinegar every 3 months. My point about the vinegar is that hutterite colonies come in from SD (a nice little pheasant hunting connection!) and buy 55gallon drums of vinegar and use it for EVERYTHING from doing their own pickling to using it to wash their cloths to cleaning things. There is no better cleaning agent against mold than vinegar due to having an acid in it called “acetic acid”…

My boat is 16 years old and I have never had to bleach out the live well. It is stainless steal(Lund). Do you guys with stinky wells have plastic?
Also I rinse after pulling the fish out every time.

suzuki wrote:

Also I rinse after pulling the fish out every time.

That’s the difference right there. A pile of thrown up perch rotting in a livewell stinks to high heaven regardless of the material the livewell is made from.

Yup… I have aluminum, and it makes no difference at all. I missed a blue gill once at the boat landing, and the garage was wrecked a couple days later. Vinegar is great for cleaning, and a lot less damaging if it spills out, or you make the mistake of tossing a bleach filled rag in the wash… trust me on that one.

Even after cleaning, that stench sticks around a bit. I eventually pulled mine out, and flushed it, then ran it most of the day at the lake the next outing. It isn’t a mistake you make a second time… I still remember the smell.

Just a thought on what to aviod. Any type of heavy detergent can permeate the plastic live wells and take much more effort to rinse out. Vinegar & bleech dilute very easy and rinse out very well.

After being on bodies of waetr that I know have invassive species, and ecspecially having fish in the live well on those bodies, I flush my well out (36 gallon live well) with 1 quart of bleech to about 10 gallons of water. I wash as thouroughly as I can and drain. I run about 20 gallons of water through to flush/rinse out. Never had a problem.
Most commonly though, I just rinse the live well out with water and leave the doors open to air out and dry. With the high volume of fish that cyle through my livewell, I often have problems with what is puked up or scales. I take the hose and back-flush the drain and over-flows to clear a lot of that crap out. That alone makes a difference

Just had this happen after bass fishing someone urped up a crawfish that got wedged in drain of live well when it was drained and after four days in the storage facility it was devastating my dog got back in the truck!!!! Haha

You didn’t put a northern in there did you? In that case try battery acid and if that doesn’t work, sell the boat!