Lateral Lines

About a month ago I took advantage of a BassFan.com promotion with The Oxygenator and purchased one for my boat. The Oxygenator is a small low-amperage device which is mounted inside your livewell. Once the water level in your livewell reaches the height of the oxygenator, the unit begins to produce pure oxygen from the water itself. Cool huh?

Why is this necesary? Well, in typical livewell aeration systems the water is pulled through an aeration pump which includes a pourous stone. Air is sucked through the stone and is drawn into the water being recirculated. Air itself only contains about 20% oxygen, but that's all well and good for the most part.

Problems arise, however when keeping fish (and live bait) alive when water temperatures exceed 80 degrees fahrenheit. As the temperature of water increases, it's ability to hold oxygen decreases. This means in a 40 gallon livewell like mine, even with aeration, the oxygen level with a couple of limits of bass in a draw tournament is, at best, a break even proposition because only 20% of the air being drawn into the system is oxygen. In all likelihood, it's more like a decreasing proposition.

One popular solution is ice. This lowers the water temperature and allows for greater dissolution for the oxygen in the water - thus higher concentration levels. Charger boats even has a neat livewell cooling system which circulates the water through the ice chest to "cool on the fly." The rub is, you're still only pumping 20% oxygen back into the water at best through your aerators.

The Oxygenator uses electrolysis to make pure oxygen out of the water molecules. The tiny bubbles of oxygen produced are so small that they are unable to break the surface tension of the water and thus circulate around until they are dissolved. It automatically shuts itself off when the livewell drains, meaning you can hook it directly to your battery and not have to worry about (I installed it through my master fuse block, though, since I'm kind of picky about stuff like that).

I took about an hour to install the Oxygenator on my boat last week. Installation was a pretty straightforward affair with easy instructions to follow. My tournament last Saturday was the first chance I've had to test it out. With water temps around 79 degrees, we reached our first spot at about 7AM and put our first fish in the box about 15 minutes after. While I couldn't seal the deal on my 5th fish which would have put me in the money for the tourney, I can say that the seven fish (my co-angler had 3 and took a check - congrats, Brian!) that we brought back were in true fighting form when I had to pull them out to bag them. They were as amped as I've ever seen fish after a full day in the livewell and the front of my shirt looked like a rainstorm had passed through once we got them in the bags.

There is one catch, though, which was almost a deal-breaker for me. Salt-based live release formula's like Bass Medic's Rejuvenade and Please Release Me at high concentration levels can cause the Oxygenator to produce Chlorine and thus kill your fish. I was told by the gentleman I spoke to at O2 Marine Tech that following the recommended dosage of Rejuvenade should not be a problem and is done all of the time by tour anglers. I used their formula yesterday but intend to do a Rejuvenade test at some point in the future since it's much easier to come by and I've got two bottles of the stuff left anyway.

Either way, I'm sold on the Oxygenator. It's well worth it to make sure those fish you bring to the live well are released to get caught again. For live bait anglers who have trouble keeping their shiners alive during the course of a day, check out the Bait Keeper which works off of 4 AA batteries and pumps raw oxygen into your bait bucket. Good stuff.