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My 27 Judge doesn't have a livewell, and the livelinning bite has been fantastic. This causes a delimma:eek: I went to youtube and saw a few homemade livewells made out of old coolers. It just so happened I had an old 50 quart igloo cooler that is losing its plastic outer coating (but the inside is fine):D
I had a battery powered air bubbler that hooks to a bucket for freshwater fishing and keeps my shiners healthy all day.
One video showed mounting a plastic container to the top of the cooler to keep the bubbler in, this keeps out water and keeps the bubbler stationary. In theory, this sounds good. I threw three screws into a "lock & lock" that was the correct size. I drilled a hole just large enough for the air hose to slide through the lock & lock. I then drilled a hole through the top of the cooler and fitted the air line into the cooler and replaced the air stone.
I had some spot in my floating pen alongside the dock. At 5 am this morning, I met a couple of buddies at my pier and dumped the spot into the cooler. I fired up the bubbler and off we went (south) to find some rockfish.
The bubbler was working great at the pier, but about 15 minutes into the run, I thought I better check on the spot. We open the cooler to find all the bait at the top and sucking air:mad: What the (insert cuss word here):eek: Then it dawned on me. The bubbler takes the air that surrounds it and forces it through the hose and out the stone. With the lid firmly on the lock & lock, it wasn't getting any outside air. When I tried to open the container, it was sucked down tight:( I eventually forced it open and left the top off of it. It worked fine the rest of the day:) We had about 25 spot in the cooler and they remained frisky for hours.

Did I say hours!!! Unfortunately, I ran to Mark's (Mlag) secret place, and didn't find what we wanted. We did find breaking fish and BIRDS. Small rockfish. Saw Jason's new ride "Rockin Robin" and pulled alongside to introduce ourselves and exchange phone numbers. We agreed to stay in touch today. I ran to Gum Thickets. One of the guys on the boat did well there a couple days ago. I looked around, dropped the hook on some Questionable marks, and spent about 15 minutes at that location. We pulled hook (love that windless), ran to Eastern Bay and found what I wanted. Fishfinder lit up!! Jason called, his fish had turned on as well:)
We bailed rock for about 30-40 minutes. We kept the better grade fish and tossed back the smaller (legal) fish that were lip hooked. Our spot were pretty big, and we had too many runoffs. Thanks to the two jigging guys on the boat, they put several nice fish in the cooler too. We did have a couple good size fish with sores that were returned to the depths to recover or die:mad:
All in all, a good day. The batteries sure got charged!! Some days you find them quickly, some days you have to run to find what you want. I know I ran over some nice fish at Podickery or Love Point, but I wanted to go South.
Thanks to Mike (garlien), for being part of todays crew. He started a new job this year and has been putting in some major hours. He was having fishing withdrawal; I hope today satisfied his "itch" for a while.
5th (Marty)