By KELLY BOSTIAN Outdoors Writer on Feb 29, 2012, at 8:19 AM Updated on 2/29 at 8:21 AM
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2012 Bassmaster Classic champion Chris Lane holds his biggest fish up to the crowd as BASS emcee Dave Mercer points and shouts his signature "boom chakalaka gi-gi-gi-gi-giant bass" in this video-grab image from the moments before Lane's final weigh-in Sunday.
The question I’m asked most about the 2013 Bassmaster Classic centers on fish care and the distance to the weigh-in at the BOK center from the tournament location at Grand Lake.
Maybe it’s a good example for folks of just how interesting this event really is. A lot of people think it’s impossible to keep all those fish healthy, but to the pros it’s no big deal at all.
In fact we’ve seen something along these lines here before, during the Sooner Run Elite Series tournament on Fort Gibson lake back in June 2010. For those weigh-ins the anglers took the fish from Sequoyah Bay Marina on the lake to Three Forks Harbor at Muskogee for the weigh-in. It’s only about a 16-mile trip but it’s a 20-25 minute drive on back roads and the weigh-ins took at least a couple hours. That situation came up in a last-minute change, but they handled it, and fish mortality was minimal.
If I recall correctly the only fish that died were because the pumps in one angler’s live well malfunctioned while he was still on the water. The fish perished so quickly there was nothing he could do.
Most of the reason for those deaths is that at that time the temperature was about 105 degrees. It’s a lot harder to keep a fish healthy at 100 degrees in 90-degree water than it is at 35 or 40 degrees in 45 or 50-degree water. If that tournament had taken place in the winter the angler might have had time to save those fish.
Gene Gilliland, assistant fisheries chief for the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation and the man who literally wrote the book on fish care for bass tournaments has gone over the following points with me time and again.
Cold water holds much higher levels of oxygen and in cold water a bass’s metabolism is slower. Those are perfect conditions for fish care and transport. Warm water is quickly deprived of oxygen (we all learned about that during last summer’s blue-green algae blooms) and to boot a fish’s systems are working overtime to maintain health.
The fish in the Classic are hauled to the weigh-in in the live wells of the boats and lifted on to the stage for the weigh-in and quickly dropped backstage into a waiting truck or pontoon boat on a trailer with a giant hatchery-style tank.
The goal is to have the fish out of the water for less than 60 seconds.
In 2013 the fish in the big tank will be taken back to Grand Lake after weigh-in to be released at various undisclosed locations.
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