I picked up an Extech D0210 meter and just tried it out. Seems to work very well. Only sampled off the end of my feeding pier so far, but the readings were as follows:

Surface Temp 92.6 DO 6.5 mg/l

6' down near bottom (by pier) Temp 87.9 DO 3.4 mg/l


Damn, it's hot!!!!

For those of us not in the know, what is the minimum DO level supposed to be to maintain a healthy population?

From what I have read, Bass don't really like anything below 5 mg/l but can tolerate as low as 3 mg/l for awhile if they have to. 10 would be saturation level and 7-8 would be what they would prefer if they could choose. I'm sure that there are caveats to that, but that's pretty close, I think.

It's rare, but I did see a case of a fish kill caused by excess DO. Northern lake with clear ice and no snow.

I've seen this almost happen during one of my tournaments. The release boat operator accidentally increased the flow coming off our O2 bottle. When he noticed several hundred bass all sucking air in the tanks he had to release everything right there at the ramp to keep from losing them. Luckily it was a deep ramp and they were able to get to good water quickly and scatter out.

When we were trained on how to set the system up, we didn't have a DO meter. Just instructed on the max flow rate and what to watch for. That's a really scary situation to see and get into.

I killed 10 breading pair of black lace angle fish after cleaning their tanks. I turned on the fill valves and forgot about them. The tanks have over flows and when I went back down there about four hours later they were all dead. 9 months of growing and pairing them up out the window.

Norther pike will grab their food by the tail and run with it really quick. This will run water backwards through the gills of the prey stunning it. The pike will then stop and flip the minnow around and eat it. Never set the hook right away on a pike wait for him to stop and ease the rod into the weight of the fish.

Cheers Don.