Fizzing Striped Bass

Striped bass like most fishes, adjust their buoyancy so they can maintain their vertical position in the water without actively swimming. Stripers adjust their buoyancy by the gas bladder.  The gas bladder in fish operates like a buoyancy compensating device used by a SCUBA diver.  As depth increases and the gas compresses (occupies less volume).  To maintain neutral buoyancy, the fish adds gas to the gas bladder.  When the fish ascends, pressure decreases, the volume of gas in the bladder expands, and buoyancy increases.  Stripers can remove gas from the bladder with the gas gland, but this a relatively slow process.  Therefore, a striper quickly displaced from deepwater to shallow water is helplessly buoyant and suffers “the bends.”  Behavioral symptoms of stripers with buoyancy problems include fish that remain at the surface after release and fish that lie on their side or assume a “head-down” posture.  These fish can be depressurized by using a #18 gauge  hypodermic needle having a length of 1 ½ to 2 inches.   Insert the needle under a scale, through the skin and into the body cavity to puncture the gas bladder.  The location of insertion is important, because sticking a vital organ, such as the closely located kidney can kill the fish. To locate the point of insertion insert the needle where the tip of the pectoral fin touches the 2^nd stripe below the lateral line as indicated in the diagram.

Information provided by the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation

Southcentral Region