Megan Plete Postol 06.07.24
If you know what fish fizzing is, you might know about Barb Elliott. Elliott is the mastermind behind saving countless bass from needless death through her work in updating New York’s bass tournament scene’s fish-fizzing best practices. Elliott serves as the B.A.S.S. Nation New York Conservation Director. She is passionate about bass fishing, and passionate about keeping bass alive during tournaments. It started when she got into bass tournament fishing with her now-husband after a 40-year fishing hiatus. Actually, it started much earlier than that. Elliott’s love of the outdoors came from childhood summers spent rambling around her grandparents rustic cabins at Sargent’s Pond in Massachusetts.
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“It was a small lake but it was like an ocean to us kids,” she said. “My brothers and I were out there on little rowboats with hula poppers, bobbers, jigs, and worms. We spent all of our time on the water.”
She grew up and left fishing behind to become a dairy farmer. But in 2007 they had just sold the dairy cows and finally had a bit more time on their hands, so they went fishing. During a tournament she saw anglers fizzing fish and wanted to learn more.
“I asked to learn how to do it,” she said. “I could see that it was far from ideal fizzing through the mouth. We were killing fish. There had to be a better way.”
The fizzing procedures at the time had a very low success rate. Fizzing through the mouth is problematic because there is a high likelihood of puncturing all the major organs that are clustered around the gullet.
“The fish that come up from deeper water, basically when you put them in the live well they are hyper-buoyant, meaning they float upside down or on their side,” she explained. “They can’t right themselves. They are slowly suffocating all day. Plus they are getting short on oxygen because their heart is not pumping and their blood gets acidotic and that little gland that regulates the pressure in the swim bladder isn’t working.”
She was spurred to do something – first research, then action.
“We really had to help the fish manage that swim bladder so they stay viable all day during the tournament,” she said. “For years, the fish were being fizzed at the end of the day after spending eight hours upside down. They really need to be fizzed during the day on the boat.”
Elliott developed “Barb’s Best Fizz Kit,” an inclusive kit with full instructions and two fizzing needles. She then worked tirelessly to promote the side-fizzing method, which had a much lower mortality rate for the tournament fish than the traditional mouth fizzing method. Her method caught on for good reason. It worked. Fish mortality was reduced greatly at bass tournaments that implemented her method.
“These fish are so powerful and strong,” she said. “These trophy fish on the St. Lawrence are often 15 to 20 years old. They are older than many of the people fishing for them. It was killing me to see these tournaments come through and see all of these fish that were very obviously not going to make it. They might not have been dead at the weigh-in, but they were going to be dead shortly after.”
Elliott was awarded the B.A.S.S. Nation Co-Conservation Director of the Year in 2020 for her work in revolutionizing tournament fizzing methods. Even now, she still works to provide hands-on seminars for anglers. How did Elliott make such a huge difference?
“One angler at a time,” she said. “I’ve been pushing this for 12 years.”
