early June I was fishing for walleye in Manitoba, water temperatures were fairly low, my buddy and I were trying to keep the walleye alive and failing, we were fishing anywhere from 20′ to 40′, we brought the fish up slow, put them in the live well and within a minute or so they were belly up, my question is, can you tell us a technique or two of how to keep walleye alive out of cold deep water?

The answer to your question can be found in the use of a Pure Oxygen System in your live well. Basically what this system does is separate the water molecules into two parts: Hydrogen and Oxygen. The Hydrogen molecules quickly rise to the surface of the water where they disintegrate into the atmosphere. The larger, heavier Oxygen molecules stay behind and dissolve into the water. The Oxygen molecules shrink to such a size that they are unable to break the water surface. This fills the water with a large amount of Oxygen. Now you are probably wondering what this has to do with keeping your walleye alive. Well it comes down to this, like us, walleye need oxygen to survive. We get our oxygen supply from the air we breathe in. Walleye gain their oxygen supply from the water. When placed into a water source that does not contain oxygen, there is nothing to sustain their life and the walleye die. One thing that is known about oxygen is that it maintains a level of saturation in the water. As the temperature rises, the oxygen saturation levels decrease. So in your case, the walleye were thriving on a maintained oxygen saturation level. You were pulling them from this environment into one with substantial temperature increases. This rapidly decreased the amount of oxygen that was available to them. Once pulled from the water, you plunked the walleye into a live well with minimal, if any, saturated oxygen, therefore causing them to die. Simply using an aerator in your live well would not be a viable solution either. Aerators only emit 21 percent oxygen into the water. A large portion of that bubbles up to the atmosphere and never becomes saturated in the live well. So pick up a Pure Oxygen System, stick it in your live well and your next walleye trip will be a success!