Tournament Delayed Mortality - A Hot Topic
by Adam Johnson

Fire up an internet search engine and check out the buzz when it comes to tournament delayed mortality.  It’s a hot topic and it should be.  For years tournaments touted their superior catch and release abilities, but unfortunately the trailers were packed and the event organizers were long gone when fish began floating to the surface, victims of delayed mortality.  The local lake users took notice, though, as well as the state Department of Natural Resources.  It wasn’t long before tournaments were scrambling to get a handle on what was going wrong. 

The culprit was oxygen.  There wasn’t enough to sustain the fish during the holding process from being caught to going through the weighing process.  Opinions were solicited from well-known biologists and measures were taken to curb the flow of unwanted delayed mortality.  Salt-based products to ease stress in the fish that were being held were quickly entering the consumer markets and livewell systems were being re-engineered to higher standards.  Weigh-in processes were being modified and aeration equipment was being added in every step.  Some of the measures worked, but most didn’t.  Today the major tournaments are making huge investments in release pontoons, oxygenated holding tanks and anglers are installing oxygentors in their livewells.  Most of the major boat manufacturers have added oxygenators to their livewells or offer this technology as an option.  The problem is with the smaller tournaments that have neither the funds, or the motivation to end the delayed mortality.

This is plainly seen when attending a small tournament venue.  Often the water temperatures in holding tanks are high and the anglers are using marginal livewells with no oxygenation equipment to supplement the marginal oxygen levels that exist in this holding environment. 

Bags get used to transport the fish from the livewell to the scales.  These are nothing more than instruments of death as studies have proven that even a few small bass in a tournament bag of water have less than a few minutes before the oxygen is completely depleted and the bass will certainly end up as turtle food on the bottom or bird food as they float on the surface.  Any tournaments that currently use bags to transport their fish are going to sustain extremely high levels of delayed mortality.

It would appear that many anglers are catching on to this problem and installing oxygenation equipment in their livewells to provide the necessary well-oxygenated environment to sustain the fish.

Many tournaments are now using well-oxygenated holding tubs with perforated boxes to transport their fish to the scales.  The fish are in well-oxygenated water during the entire process.  Perforated bags and flow-through bags are also being utilized with success.

The key here is to educate the tournament organizers as well as the anglers who participate.  If you really care for the resource then quit fishing badly organized tournaments unless measures have been taken to ensure that the fish are not held in the bags longer than 60 seconds or fresh, well-oxygenated water is delivered to the fish.  Make sure all livewells are consistently adding water to the fish and during hot periods when the water in a lake or reservoir is unable to sustain decent oxygen levels due to high water temperatures, make sure livewells have the necessary oxygenation equipment installed.

It’s imperative that we pull out all the stops to put a halt to tournament delayed mortality.  The negative feedback that results in dead fish floating to the surface after a recently held event will result in severe restrictions that curtail what I view as a great sport.

This is one tournament angler that hopes that everyone that competes as I do gets the message and does whatever is necessary to keep the resource healthy.

Adam Johnson is a pro-outdoorsman and Aquatic Biologist.  He can be contacted at www.adamjohnsonoutdoors.com.  For more on delayed fish mortality visit www.keepfishalive.com.