In the past, I have written several articles on culling bass. The
articles talked about proper handling of the fish, maintaining proper
water chemistry, culling clips and scales. The main theme of all of
these articles where to help fishing men and women to keep there fish
alive. But, the must important point of these articles was to help
increase the percent of fish being released alive and in good health.
Handling fish properly
is a no brainer to most people. However, I see people drop or place
the fish in the bottom of the boat (on carpet) a lot. Doing so, removes
the fish’s protective slime and increases
the risk of sores and infection. I know sometime it is unavoidable
to place a fish in this situation. However, it should be limited or
prevented if at all possible. Previous articles talked about using
chemicals (Catch & Release or Rejuvencade) in the live-well to
help replenish the fish’s protective slime and a reduction of
stress placed on the fish while in the live-well. One article talked
about proper pH and oxygen levels in the live-well. These chemical
levels can be maintained in the live-well with the help from the Fish
O2 by T&H Marine (www.thmarine.com) or devices like it. The article
about culling covers the culling tags I prefer which are the Berkley
colored culling cords with hole-less clips from Pure Fishing. The scale
I use is either the X-Tool scale or the new Berkley Culling scale from
Pure Fishing. (Go to article
archives to read past articles.)
I give this history
to explain how much time I have spent trying to keep my fish a live
in tournaments and during the process of culling fish. However, I
am still running into one problem over and over. The problem is which
fish to cull next. It seems like every tournament I fished in 2008
in which fish were culled. I had two fish that were twins. I used
my balance beam to decide which fish to cull next. The problem was
it may be several hours before culling again. Old-timers had set
in and I forget which color tagged fish to cull, resulting in me
rebalancing the two smallest fish again. This is a major problem
for two reasons: first wasted fishing time and second re-handling
these fish 3, 4 or 5 times places stress on the fish handled as well
as the other fish in the live-well being moved around to catch the
two smallest fish to be culled. I had set out to solve this problem
of keeping up with which fish to cull next several months ago. My
wife and I went to Bass Pro Shop to look at and possible buy the
Ardent culling tags. These tags have a round float attacked which
is a weight recorder. It will record weights up to 15 pounds. The
first problem I had with these tags was Bass Pro Shop did not have
any in stock and the second is that the ball on the tag is a big
float. Referring to an old article, tags with floats in my experiences
causes more stress to the fish, hard to keep in the fish’s
mouth if you use hole-less clips and make smallmouth bass thrash
and jump in the live-well as well as out of the live-well when live-well
lid is open.
When I returned
home from BPS, I had an email from the person who invented Accu-Cull
Culling System. I called the inventor after looking at the product
on the internet and told him I would purchase one of his units. After
receiving the unit and using it, I concluded it will solve my problem.
The Accu-Cull unit is all plastic so water is not an issue and no
parts to rust. The Accu-Cull unit is easily mount on the live-well
lid, another compartment lid or does not have to be mounted. The
Accu-Cull unit keeps up to 7 fishes’ weight, each fish up
to 9.99 pounds. I agree with the inventor. He told me, if he had a
bass over 9.99 pounds then he did not think it would ever be culled.
The Accu-Cull unit works with culling colored tags or numbered culling
tags. It is numbered 1 through 7 as well as colored: white, green,
orange, yellow, red, blue and grey/black. I first thought the weight
dials were hard to change weights. But, I realize that having it mounted
in the live-well lid fish jumping hit the unit and boat travel in 3
to 5 footers jarred the Accu-Cull unit. The weight dials have remained
unchanged and need to be tight.
The Accu-Cull Culling unit is going to work for me whether I am only
trying to keep up with the next fish to cull or keeping up with each
fish’s weight of the whole limit. The suggested retail price
39.99 U.S. dollars. The Accu-Cull Culling unit does not come with culling
tags. Ask for it at your local tackle stores. If your tackle store
does not have it stock then they can order it from their wholesaler
or they can order it on-line at bshores@cableone.net or www.accucull.com or call Lucky2creations at (208)919-3254.
Contact
Ed Guide: Email
