Plop, Plop, Fizz, Fizz

A bunch of guys over at Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (Randall Myers , John Dennis , Bobby Farquhar , Greg Southard , Dan Foley , and Sul Ross) carried out a great study on Amistad Res. to determine the beneficial, or not so beneficial aspects of “fizzing” your bass. Barotrauma is the technical term, but it’s what happens when your bass’s air bladder blows up when you pull him out of deep water quickly. Depending upon which website you’ve visited, you’ve either heard the praises sung of using a hypodermic needle to vent your bass, or the opposite, that it makes no difference, and may even make things worse. This most recent study found the latter to largely be the case.

The study took place back in 2009-2010 at Amistad Reservoir, Texas, and it involved largemouth bass. They were trying to come up with a series of recommendations they could make concering this issue in tournament caught bass.

Overall, the incidence of hyperinflated bass “ranged from 34 to 68% for five tournament events, impacting an estimated 13,500 fish/year at the reservoir.  Between 6 and 24% of anglers/teams treated their fish for the condition prior to weigh-in, however the majority (68-93%) of afflicted fish were treated by tournament staff after weigh-in.”

What were the results of ‘treating’ these overinflated bass?

• The untreated bass experienced lower post-release survival than non-afflicted fish for two of the five tournaments.  However, the difference was minimal with survival averaging 81% for afflicted fish and 89% for non-afflicted fish.
• None of the three treatment methods were effective for increasing survival of afflicted fish.
• Fish receiving side fizzing or deep release experienced similar survival as control fish and mouth-fizzed fish experienced 14% lower survival.
• Survival was unrelated to timing of treatment (1 or 5 h) and level of training received by those performing fizzing treatments.

So technically, treatment by means of fizzing bass or deep water release did not significantly increase survival. However, they concluded that fish should still be treated by anglers or tourney personnel, “because untreated floating fish near release sites are exposed to additional sources of mortality such as predation, sun exposure, and injury from boats.” So it’s the secondary factors that really drive the recommendation to fizz, including (I assume)  the possible negative perception of having “floaters” post tourney weigh-in.