Home made live well aerator

[NCangler]

A member of my Triumph Owners Boat website posted this idea for a live well. I thought others might enjoy it here. He is a Catfish and Bass angler from Spotsylvania, VA and he gave me permission to post this.

Well, I decided to enter my first catfish tournament this coming weekend. So, all I needed was a live well to keep the big ones alive until weigh-in so I could then release them.

I ran into Scott Cannon (Big Fish Guide Service) at Deep Bottom Landing last weekend and got some pointers from him. His advice helped tremendously.

I went to Wal-Mart and bought a 750gph Aerator pump ($19.87), 2 alligator clips ($.97) and some flex tubing (don't remember how much that was).

I got an old 150 qt cooler and pulled the drain plug out of it. The aerator pump fits perfectly in the stock drain plug hole. I only had to drill one hole to run the flex tubing through. I then used a soldering iron to burn holes in the tubing to spray the water back into the cooler. The stock drain plug fit perfectly into the end of the flex tube to cap it off. I then used stainless screws to hold the tubing in place.

I'll see how well it holds up to a cat in the cooler. If he rips the flex tubing off I'll probably just switch over to PVC. The only thing I have left is a strainer so no junk gets sucked into the pump. I'm still trying to find that part. All the other parts were on the same shelf at wal-mart.

I'm just going to strap it to the 2 cleats up front for tournaments.