The History of the Striper Tube!  Where the idea come from!

By Warren Turner, Past President of the National Striped Bass Association

My introduction to Striped Bass: 

I came up with the Striper Tube as a solution to a fisheries management need that was identified to me in 1999 by Anthony Rayburn.  Anthony was a fisheries biologist from the Georgia Department of Natural Resources.  At that time I was also serving my first term as the president of the Striper Kings, a striped bass fishing club from GreenvilleSC.  I joined the Striper Kings in 1989 after getting out of the US Army where I was stationed near the New Jersey coast.  When I was in New Jersey the AtlanticCoast striped bass fishery was at historically and dangerously low levels and had been placed under mandatory fishery management controls to aid in its recovery.  I actually caught my first striped bass on Lake Wateree located in North central  South Carolina in February 1989, but my actual introduction to Striped Bass occurred at the early age of 11 while living in Sumter South Carolina and fishing on the Santee Lakes. 

While fishing on weekends with my family on the banks of the SanteeLakes, I watched as boaters in big fancy boats trolled out from shore for large striped bass while I fished along the rocks on the shore for pan sized bluegill.  But it was my younger brother that hooked into the first striped bass in our family and he did it with a stolen rod.  Well, let’s say borrowed since he is now an ordained Baptist minister.  I was 11 and he was 7.  I had just bought a new large popping plug and the greatest fishing rod and reel combo imaginable with some money I got from my grandfather for working on his tobacco farm.  I kept casting my line into the bushes and breaking off the lures so my father who was a supply sergeant at Shaw AFB, with the patience of Job, decided to put on some special string for me.  This was in the summer of 1970 and he had a spool of that old black braided line that you had to have a saw to cut.  Well, while I was not looking, my brother took my trusty ZEBCO 202, (Did I say the greatest rod and reel, you have to realize I was 11 years old!) with my new line and popper and went to a bridge that separated 2-bodies of water.  The current ran through this bridge at all times and the striped bass were always in the area.  Anyway, he was slapping the water and causing a ruckus like a 7-year old would when all of a sudden a fish hit the plug and almost pulled him in.  He through the rod over his shoulder and started pulling one way like playing tug-a-war and the next thing we knew he had this huge long silvery fish pulled up to the top of the bridge with the tail of the fish still hanging into the water.  This wish must have been 40-inches long since the bridge had a 36-inch clearance.  The fish was hung at the top of the bridge and my brother was still tugging.  I was running to try and get to him but he kept pulling the fish up and down and just as I was about to reach over to get the fish the line had evidently rubbed the line and frayed it in half and the fish dropped back into the water along with my brand new popper.  This was my first introduction to a striped bass and I was intrigued!

Striper Kings switch to hands-on fishery projects:

When I joined the Striper Kings they were predominantly a tournament fishing club but they collected money at every other club meeting through door prize raffles and gave a cash donation every 2-3 years to the SC Department of Natural Resources (SCDNR) for striped bass fishery improvements.  Knowing government budgeting from my service in the army, I explained that the cash donations were a feel good program but had little true value to the striped bass fishery and convinced the Striper Kings in 1991 to switch from donating money to actually doing hands-on projects with the biologists to make true fishery improvements.  The SCDNR biggest problem was getting enough brood fish to supply the hatchery.  The Striper Kings adopted the SCDNR Jack D. Bayless Striped Bass Hatchery and within one year our assistance began showing immediate results in stocking ability.  Striped Bass hatcheries must capture their brood fish each year from natural fishery stocks.  Because Striped Bass require specialized handling, they must be caught by fishery biologist using electro-shock fishing.  Our first project practically doubled the SCDNR hatchery’s efficiency in successfully spawning the brood fish and thus cut their required number of brood fish to meet stocking needs in half.  For the first time in over 15-years, in 1992 the SCDNR striped bass hatchery was able to meet all of its stocking needs.  From 1991-1999 our assistance continued to make a major difference and the Striper Kings organization was recognized and honored as the 1999 SC Conservationist of the Year.  This set the stage for the visit from Anthony Rayburn who officially asked the Striper Kings to do the same thing for the Georgia striped bass fishery.  This seemed like a reasonable request since the Striper Kings fish tournaments on lakes Hartwell, Thurmond and Murray and the GADNR was responsible for stocking striped bass in both LakeThurmond and LakeHartwell.  The GADNR was having a problem getting enough brood fish to supply the hatchery and were looking for alternate locations and methods to improve their stocking ability.  The Striper Kings considered the request and identified some locations to find brood fish, but decided that they would not be able to support both the SCDNR and the GADNR striped bass programs and chose to continue their support of the SC striped Bass Hatchery.  This was the right answer for the Striper Kings but not the right answer for our total striped bass fishery.  Therefore I started a new organization called the Southeastern Striped Bass Association (SSBA).

The Investigation Starts: (Identifying the 5-key Limiting Requirements)

The SSBA mission was to improve the striped bass fishery across the entire southeastern United States that would not be bounded by state borders.  The purpose of the SSBA was to organize fishermen to do fishery improvement work and to assist state and federal fishery biologists as needed to protect and preserve the fishery and to use organized striped bass tournaments to promote the program.  Since the availability of brood stock continued to surface as a problem in landlocked striped bass fishery management, this became an opportunity that needed to be explored further.  I knew that during the traditional spawning periods, our clubs striped bass tournaments continued to bring what appeared to be spawning quality striped bass but they were always dead.  Was this true in all striped bass tournaments?  I conducted internet surveys and research to see if any other organization had ever conducted live striped bass weigh-ins and released the stripers alive afterward.  The question that kept coming to mind was if we could bring those fish in alive and healthy and in spawning condition, couldn’t striped bass tournaments be a source of brood fish for areas having problems capturing enough brood fish.  If this was possible, it would appear that the opportunity would be resolved in a manner that would combine striped bass fishermen and their fishery biologists into a tight and long term working partnership. 

After 1-year of research I found absolutely no cases of catch, hold, transport, and weigh-in live striped bass on any kind of scale, large or small.  I was determined with finding out why it could not be done.  Live weigh-in and release of striped bass by average striped bass fishermen from an average sized boat, especially as the result of an organized tournament, had the potential of promoting striped bass fishing and the striped bass fishery to an unprecedented level that would secure the fishery for the future.  However, to make this possible the next step was to study the striped bass and to determine what causes striped bass to die, why can’t fishermen keep their stripers alive and healthy, and what are the limiting factors that would need to be identified and resolve to make live hold, transport and release of striped bass.  I identified five key limiting requirements that would have to be resolved to make a system work.  These limiting requirements were;

1) It had to keep striped bass alive and healthy long term,

2) It needed to help fish recover from angling stress to make the fish usable for spawning,

3) It had to be large enough to hold tournament and brook stock quality striped bass of at least 20-30-pounds,

4) It had to be compact enough to fit in the average fishing boat along with all the other traditional gear, and

5) It had to be easy for the fishermen to use and operate.  And, it would be nice if it looked good too!

Where did a tube concept come from?

A trip by my wife Pamela Turner, my daughter Contessa Turner, and myself to the Chattanooga Fish Aquarium revealed some revelations to a fishery layman like me interested in striped bass.  The fishery biologists had trained me that the striped bass develop lactic acid in their blood during the angling that caused muscle cramps in the fish like a long distance runner gets after a long run if he quits running without a cool down period.   Likewise, striped bass that were angled to exhaustion and then placed in traditional fish live wells and containers without room for the striped bass to swim also experienced similar muscles cramps seemingly because they could not swim and ultimately became weaker and died.  Even for fish kept alive, according to the biologist, this angling stress made the fish caught by anglers to not be very productive for brood stock.  According to them, some isolated cases did provide that male striped bass caught by anglers by hook and line could be used in some isolated cases but female striped bass caught by hook and line had not been very productive in the past and it was the female striped bass brood fish that is the hardest to find and utilize.  So for a holding system to be productive is had to allow for striped bass to recover from lactic acid buildup and other angling stress while being held.  So what was the key to this recovery?  The striped bass had to have oxygen and plenty of it.  Fishery biologists used compressed oxygen and saturated the water to get the dissolved oxygen (DO) levels high enough to keep striped bass alive and healthy while they transported them.  By saturating the water with dissolved oxygen, the striped bass recovered to normal levels.  However, the biologists used 300-500 gallon tanks to hold the stripers as well and this would not meet my 4^th Key limiting factor. 

I stood in amazement for several hours studying the large striped bass held in their aquarium.  I quickly noticed that the striped bass never stopped swimming.  And when I say never, I mean in 2-trips to the Aquarium, and 6-plus hours of observation not a single striped bass stopped moving in a forward motion for even a few seconds.  My previous volunteer work at the SCDNR striped bass hatchery had given me an opportunity to learn many things about the striped bass.  For example, I knew that striped bass had very few naturally reproducing fisheries in landlocked freshwater fisheries.  This was because the striped bass eggs must continuously move once fertilized or they die and most of our fisheries do not have a river system that will allow the striped bass eggs to tumble for the minimum 48 hours.  I also knew from working at the SCDNR striped bass hatchery that once hatched the striped bass larvae continuously scurried around using their tail.  From this I developed a theory that striped bass must continuously move in a forward direction to live.  In other words, if they stop moving they die!   

Then, one day while cleaning out my filter for my backyard goldfish pond, I discovered that there were several small baby goldfish that had gone through the filter.  These goldfish had survived and were living in the pipes from the filter to the pond’s waterfall and had actually grown large enough that they could not come out of the pipe while it was connected to the filter and pump.  Based on this and my previous developed “continuous movement” theory, I developed two different scenarios.  Either the holding tank had to be large enough to allow the striped bass to swim around naturally (continuous movement of the fish) to get the water across the striped bass’s gills, or the striped bass had to be controlled and allow the water to flow naturally (continuous movement of the water) across the striped bass gills.  From this I associated a pipe as a controlled environment and developed 2 systems (a horizontal system and a vertical system) and in April 2001 I went to the SCDNR striped bass hatchery and asked Tom Curtis, supervising biologist at the striped bass hatchery, to review the idea and plans and give his feedback.  He agreed to keep the information confidential and reviewed my ideas.   And his comments were along the line of amazement of how simple the idea was and why no fishery biologist had ever thought of doing it.  Tom suggested that the vertical unit would be better on the striped bass because the nose down position would serve as a natural sedative.  He said that the vertical unit resembled a tuna tube but was much longer.  I had never heard of a Tuna Tube but investigated it further and found that they were made to keep small tuna alive for short periods of time to be used for bait later.  They were not built or designed to give any long term survival of the fish and all were designed with the tails of the fish never being submerged.  In other words, they were too short and I could not find any off the shelf unit that would meet the needs for striped bass.  I built and tested both types (vertical and horizontal) units using striped bass and they both worked.  However, I did not have the resources to take the idea from concept to manufacturing. 

Field testing the Striper Tube

In June 2001, we formed  “Live Systems” to produce a prototype striper tube with plans to later produce them for the open market.  We also started the National Striped Bass Association.  In December 2002, we provided the prototype striper tube to our NSBA members free to test and give feedback in our first National Championship.  Later we asked our members to further assist us in testing them on a longer term basis and as such we provided the prototype striper tube only to NSBA members and at a price that was at or below our cost.  This was for experimenting and testing.  NSBA members are held to a Code-of-Conduct that prevents them from doing or saying anything that can injure or harm the NSBA and/or its sponsors.  Additionally, we provided 18 of the striper tubes on a loan basis to the SCDNR for a scientific study to identify if the striper tube actually provided a recovery chamber for the striped bass while they are being held and to track the striped bass after release to measure and document their survival verses delayed mortality.  We also asked the SCDNR to assist us by measuring the striped bass’s physiological reaction to being held in a striper tube and to help identify any boundaries of their use such as hot weather verses cold weather. 

The striper tubes have met the tests and have changed the perception of striped bass fishing.  The NSBA has been conducting live release striped bass tournaments for 5-years and have held and release thousands of striped bass.  Striped bass have been transported in striper tubes and used as brood stock.  The striper tubes work, especially when the water is cooler.  See the area on Scientific studies for more information.