All,

As those who participated in our recent Roosevelt event, you may recall Larry Sullivan commenting that had we had one more dead fish to the scales we would have been required to shut-down our event according to our permit requirements.  We were dangerously close to exceeding our 10% mortality limit.  After Larry anounced that we need to be more careful, another member commented that these fish were hooked too deep to save.  I understand that, but I also was approached Saturday three different times by fellow anglers, discouraged about their fish in the livewell.  Now I am an engineer by trade and I like to study numbers.  A total of seven fish were having trouble in these various livewells.  I asked each of the anglers if the fish were hooked deep.  Of the seven only two had that problem.  I then asked if they were caught and pulled from deep (40 feet) water.  The response was an overwhelming "no."  This means that of those seven, five should have been fairly fine survining a day in a fully operating livewell, given the temperatures we were dealing with that day.   
What I discovered is a need for educating each other on livewell maintenance.  Some of our new members may not have the information they need to keep the fish healthy.  Perhaps an opportune time to have a quick discussion at a general meeting about this issue.  Ed Telders had given this discussion once before, but I am sure any of the veteran members could help out on this important topic. 
As a side note, I suggested to these fine anglers to keep both the recirc and freshwater pumps running full time until weigh-in.  I am happy to report that those five fish returned to their normal selves and lived to bite another day. 
Kirk