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Recent Articles on Accu-Cull

Culling Your Fish Accu-cull-rately
by Brad Wiegmann

Accu-cull with tagsFor tournament anglers everywhere, the challenge of culling their fish has always been a tricky task.  The act of culling is when an angler or team has reached their limit of fish and have to either replace the fish they just caught with one of the fish from the livewell or release it.  The majority of fishing tournaments do not allow contestants to keep more fish in their livewell once they have their tournament limit.  As you can tell culling the wrong fish can cost you winning a tournament or getting a check, if not done correctly.

In the past, several companies have designed and sold electronic culling systems for anglers to use.  Some are extremely complex devices with complicated instructions.

Only the minority anglers understood or had time to read the directions during a tournament.  The majority of culling systems come with culling stringers that attach to the fish by clipping on to them.  These stringers are either color coded or have a number located on the float.

This is to help identify the size fish that is connected to the stringer.  To cull, the culling scale would display which stringer (fish) to remove from the livewell and replace with the fish just caught.

In addition to electronic culling systems, there are also an abundant number of manual culling systems or kits available.  Some include a grease board with a grease pencil to record the correlating weight and color or number stringer.  Another group of companies have started to make colored stringers that you can manually set the weight of the fish according to the fishes weight.  By turning the dials located in the float section of the stringer, anglers can see what each fish weigh and which one needs to be culled.

Numerous other culling products are available to anglers that will increase the livelihood of fish returning alive to where they were caught.  Of course, the benefit of anglers using a culling system that does not harm fish means more fish for anglers to catch now and in the future.  There are drawbacks to some of these culling systems.  The list includes dead batteries, pushing the incorrect button causing an angler to lose all their weights, having to reach into the livewell to check for the lowest weight, chasing the stringers in the livewell, accidentally erasing the grease board with all the weights, or a number of other situations that cause the angler to re-cull or not be able to cull at all.

For Brent Shores, inventor of the Accu-cull Culling System, (https://www.accucull.com) culling is no longer a challenge for him.  “Seven years ago I was fishing in a bass tournament where culling was proving to not be an easy task,” Shores continued, “I came up with the idea of creating a better system to cull fish with.”  Having experienced this frustration first hand, Shores went to work designing what is now the Accu-cull Culling System.  The Accu-cull Culling System is the size of a VHS tape, saltwater resistant, and has both numbering and color identification so it can work with any scale or culling stringer  system you already have or can purchase.  So, anglers with color coded culling bags can easily use this system.  It is all plastic, ABS construction with no metal parts to rust or fail and made in the United States.  The dials lock into place securely and will not shake out of the set position.  “Simply rotate the culling system’s wheel up or down to match the weight of the fish that you put in your livewell,” Shores went on, “You can pick any scale you want to use, match the numbers in tenths, ounces, hundredths, and even kilometers; 9.99 is the highest weight it can record, but common sense says if you catch a bass over 10-pounds you probably will not be culling it.”  Shores also suggested anglers use a dark colored culling bag when weighing their fish, “It helps keep the fish from flopping around and makes switching them easier”.

The Accu-cull Culling System can be mounted anywhere in the boat but Shores recommended mounting it on the livewell lid.  All an angler has to do is secure the cradle that holds the unit on to the lid to the livewell with 1-inch VHB tape and allowed to dry for 24-hours before using.

For Shores and other anglers, the Accu-cull Culling System is the answer to the challenge of culling fish.  Another advantage to using the Accu-cull Culling System is anglers can use their existing stringers and weigh scale.  The answer to Shores culling frustration is now, the answer for anglers everywhere

 

Culling Accurately with Accu-Cull

By
Edward Guice

In the past, I have written several articles on culling bass.  The articles were about the proper handling of fish, maintaining proper water chemistry, culling clips and scales.  The main theme of all of these articles were to help fishing men and women keep their fish alive.  The most important point of these articles was to help increase the percent of fish being released alive and in good health.
Handling fish properly is a no brainer to most people.  However, I see people drop or place the fish in the bottom of the boat (on carpet) a lot. Doing so removes the fish’s protective slime and increases the risk of sores and infection.  I know at times it is unavoidable to place a fish in this situation, however, it should be limited or prevented if at all possible. Previous articles talked about using chemicals (Catch & Release or Rejuvencade) in the live-well to help replenish the fish’s protective slime and a reduction of stress placed on the fish while in the live-well.  One article talked about proper pH and oxygen levels in the live-well.  These chemical levels can be maintained in the live-well with the help from the Fish O2 by T&H Marine (www.thmarine.com) or devices like it.  The article about culling covers the culling tags I prefer which are the Berkley colored culling cords with hole-less clips from Pure Fishing. The scale I use is either the X-Tool scale or the new Berkley Culling scale from Pure Fishing. (Go to article archives to read past articles.)
I give this history to explain how much time I have spent trying to keep my fish alive in tournaments and during the process of culling fish.  However, I am still running into one problem over and over.  The problem is which fish to cull next.  It seems like every tournament I fished in 2008 in which fish were culled I had two fish that were twins.  I used my balance beam to decide which fish to cull next.  The problem was it may be several hours before culling again.  “Old-timers” had set in and I forgot which color tagged fish to cull, resulting in me rebalencing the two smallest fish again.  This is a major problem for two reasons: wasted fishing time and re-handling the fish 3, 4 or 5 times.  Rehandling the fish places stress on the fish handled as well as the other fish in the live-well being moved around to catch the two smallest fish to be culled.  I had set out to solve this problem of keeping up with which fish to cull next several months ago.  My wife and I went to Bass Pro Shop to look at and possibly buy the Ardent culling tags. These tags have a round float attached which is a weight recorder.  It will record weights up to 15 pounds.  The first problem I had with these tags was Bass Pro Shop did not have any in stock and the second is that the ball on the tag is a big float.  Referring to an old article, my experience with tags with floats causes more stress to the fish, are hard to keep in the fish’s mouth if you use hole-less clips and make smallmouth bass thrash and jump in the live-well as well as out of the live-well when the live-well lid is open.
When I returned home from BPS, I had an email from the person who invented Accu-Cull Culling System.  I called the inventor after looking at the product on the internet and told him I would purchase one of his units.  After receiving the unit and using it, I concluded it would solve my problem.  The Accu-Cull unit is all plastic so water is not an issue and no parts will rust.  The Accu-Cull unit is easy to mount on the live-well lid, another compartment lid or does not have to be mounted.  The Accu-Cull unit keeps the weight of one to seven fish and up to 9.99 pounds for each fish. I agree with the inventor.  He told me, if he had a bass over 9.99 pounds then he did not think it would ever be culled.  The Accu-Cull unit works with colored culling tags or numbered culling tags.  It is numbered one through seven as well as colored: white, green, orange, yellow, red, blue and grey/black.
The Accu-Cull Culling unit is going to work for me whether I am only trying to keep up with the next fish to cull or keeping up with the total weight of the whole limit.