If you fish in deep water, targeting smallmouth bass deeper than 20 feet or so, here’s a quick trick that you need to know about.
When a fish is brought to the surface from deep water, there is a pressure change within the body, just like divers experience. This results in changes to the body that can be life threatening to smallmouth bass.
“So what” you say? Well what happens is, that swim bladder gets bigger, filling with air from the pressure change, causing the fish to have trouble staying upright in the water. If the fish is immediately released and they go back down to deep water, it is unlikely there will be a problem.
However, if the smallie is kept in a livewell, that is where you are going to run into trouble and you may potentially end up killing that fish.
Take a look at this video to learn more and for an easy to perform technique for emptying the swim bladder and helping these bass live longer, reproduce more and keep those smallie populations up!
How to Fizz a smallmouth bass
Wasn’t that easy?
if this procedure isn’t performed and the fish is forced to expend all its energy, trying to stay in a neutral position, this stress will push it over the edge and cause a major increase in death rate in these bass. There’s a tool that you can use for this technique available here. That way, you won’t look like an addict with a bunch of needles laying around the boat!
