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Ok well sort of. My brother, who is always good for about 1/2 of the needed information regarding anything, said that when he was on his last tour with Uncle Sam, he and the boys shocked fish using an Army hand-crank field phone. Took one of his home, eliminated anything to do with the phone, hooked up some small wires, stripped the ends and put it in the pond and cranked away. Seemed to just piss off the minnows that swam by. Put the leads in a bucket with some minnows, cranked and sure enough it works. Ok, how do I get it to work in the pond? Anyone heard of this? Anyone got it to work? I know I need to get a drill adapter of some sort cuz I got a serious blister on my finger from cranking that thing by hand. I need to get the asian walking catfish out of my pond and kind of experimenting to see if I can do it myself. Or just shock the crap out of me.
Toby

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I know nothing about how to get something like that to work, nor the dangers involved, but I did run across this article refering to the legality of using one in the state of Mississippi. I'm sure other states have a similar law, but I'm not sure how it would apply to a private pond. Just don't win a Darwin award okay!

http://www.mdwfp.com/news/shownews.asp?ID=188


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Old timers here in Texas used to use the old crank telephones to shock fish up. There are still some devices around on the "black market" that you can build to do this. Doing so is highly illegal in public waters. Our pond pros do so to take surveys. The safest way would be to hire one of them to come out for a day.

Very dangerous, very illegal. Be careful.


Nick Smith
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phones like that or wires hooked up to batteries will only shock up catfish. fish with scales have a natural armor against shocking. my shocking boat uses a 3500 watt generator. I generlly use around 300 -500 volts pulling 4 amps or around 35-60% of the generators total capacity

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300 to 500 volts @ 4 amps, what was the Frequency? was it DC or AC.
I like to know the specs to one of these things, me being an EE should be able to build one of these things.

BTW: at 500 volt and 4 amps thats 2000 watts does the water temp seem to go up when you do this?

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I heard of a guy who knew a guy who's cousins nephew built one for catfish. Since these devices are illigal, that was purposefully vague, but it was not me! Anyhoo, it consisted of a 555 timer delivering a square wave into the base of a high current transistor. I don't remember if it was wired as an emitter follower or if the output came off of the collector, but it did a high current capable 12 volt amplitude square wave. Memory fails me once again, but 200 sounds familar. So it was either 200mS for the time or 200 hertz. Sorry so vague, but as I said, I didn't build it.


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The electrofishing box that you can purchase converts the electricity from AC (coming from the generator) to DC. I think this process is called rectification. big pond, you would know better than me. My understanding is that rectifier gives the DC current a pulsing effect, around 60 times per second. that pulsing is what makes shocking fish safe. if you shock with AC current you run the risk of popping the hearts of the fish that are shocked up.

I'm not sure about the frequency, but I did not "build" the electroshocking box that hooks up to the generator. you can buy those, they start around 4K.

water temperture may go up in the field but I have never been dumb enough to stick a thermometer in the water to check. the thermometers I carry are cased in metal. If the temp does go up it cant be much, you are never in one area for very long and even a small pond has a few million gallons of water. tough to heat that much water up

gotta go kill some weeds

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SO Shan you built one of these up you say? Do you have schematics for this? Sounds like you went through a transformer and then to and bridge, did you filter the output
please send schematic to r_boulware@hotmail.com

thanks buddy

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Big-POnd Shan and I both bought our setup from Smith Root www.smith-root.com. They basically have a monopoly on elctroshock equipment. I don't try to understand how it all works I just know it does a good job, but cost is high.


Greg Grimes
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holy cow....water....electricity...shocking....all the things we were tought to stay away from as kids...AND adults!!! i think i'd leave it to the pros!! oh, just in case you screw up...can i have dibs on your fishing poles and old lures?? just kidding...be careful, sounds too dangerous for me, i'd leave it to the greg's out there.

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Big Pond, It is not a filtered rectifier. It is a high power capacity pulsating DC generator. It converts AC to pulsating DC at a high current capability. Way more complicated than a simple rectifier.

It is not steady DC, but pulsating. The amplitude and frequency are what we need to know.


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All we need is to do is step up to 500 to 550 volts then full bridge it then put larg filter caps on the output of the bridge then run it through an IGBT to chop the output to what ever frequency and duty cycle we wanted to. We could use a simple micro to control the IGBT.

Man it is worth experimenting around with, could save a bundle on shocking cost!!

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big_pond,

It is definitely possible to build your own shocking system that works as well as the Smith Root. I know because I've used Smith Root units extensively and I've built four "homemade" units. I've also had quite a bit of experience with the old Coffelt units and other garage-built systems.

The heart of the system is a bridge rectifier, which can be had for about $15. The Smith Root uses exactly the same rectifier, embedded in potting compound on a heat sink, but they charge $350.

However, please don't ask for the schematics, I won't give them out because of liability concerns.

One other disclaimer, there's more to fisheries management than just having an operational shock unit.

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If you are using an 120 volt AC Gen set what type of Transformer are you using?

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I run my current setup on a 220 volt 4000 watt generator.

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This has all the makeings of a 911 episode. Please leave it the pro's, I don't want to hear of one of our members dying in their own pond.

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Transformers, pulsating DC, rectifiers...what ever happened to good old fashioned DYNAMITE !

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With the currents we are talking about in an IGBT, you have to avoid latch up. All the things that I don't know do make this a scary proposition. How well the water will conduct, we need a current limiting device for safety. Might want to do a LOT of research before getting on the water with one of these. Isolate the device entirely from your boat. You dont want current traveling back through your motor into your boats electronics. An SCR also came to mind for this, but you would have to have pulsating DC into its anode in order that it turn off. The main thing is building something that will provide 500 to 600 volts at 4 amps.

Just a lot of random thoughts.


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Dynamite still works great for fishing but is not the best for catch and release ponds.

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Ok, I dont want to kill myself nor every fish in my pond so although this is some good/funny reading I can take it that no one here has ever set up a field phone as a shocker? Silly urban myth.
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We can also start with a 12V battery or 24V it don't matter and use a fly back boost regulator circuit this would be safer in that you don't have to worry about haveing a 240 volt gen-set on the boat, but with 2000 watts you will run the batteries down quick. This is very do-able for sure not very complicated circuit.

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I got the specs for a fish shocker.

24 volt input / 20 amp max
50 to 990 v0lt output, selectable
40 amp peak / 4 amp continuous @ 100 volts
Smooth DC, or pulsed DC
1 Hz to 120 Hz - selectable
1 to 99% Duty Cycle - selectable


Nick Smith
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Nick could you put some common terms or a little more description to that please.
Toby

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This seem like somthing that could easily be done.. Would need a PIC controller or PLD to control a signal to some IGBTs and a fly back transformer circuit. The frequency is not very high either..... \:\)

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I am uncomfortable with this discussion. I do not want to give enough information that someone will go out and kill themselves trying to shock up fish. I hate to put the information into common terms because of that reason.

It is important to realize just how dangerous this is. The unit that I referenced has many safety features built in. I would hate to see someone without experience in this area try this and hurt or kill themselves. The brain controls the rest of the body with electrical signals. These signals that travel through your nerves are billionths of a volt. So your brain tells your heart to beat via a very small signal. An electrical shock of a higher voltage can prevent that small signal from your brain from reaching your heart, causing it to stop.

I do not want to be the reason that anybody decided to experiment with electricity and water. This is too dangerous. So I would rather not put out this information in a more common format.


Nick Smith
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