Culling fish is my least favorite aspect of tournament fishing. I'm bad with remembering numbers and have tried a couple different systems with no luck. Soon as you start catching them fast it gets messy. I watch all the BASS and FLW videos online and I see the pros having the same problems. It's funny when you see the guys with the X-tools floats and they modified them with metal clips (I did the same thing). I've seen Kelly Jordan with an X-Tools trying to get a weight and watching that cursor spin on the read-out. In one I watched this week on FLW the guy catches a 2lber, looks the well, and goes, "yeah this is going to be fun".

So Nico and I have been trying this Ardent Smart Cull System lately and I'm straight sold on it. The basic concept is that you catch the fish, weigh it, then dial in the weigh on the cull buoy. When you need to cull you just look in the well and grab the small one. If anything is close you can beam them. With a divided well you keep the smaller ones to one side and it makes it even easier.

The Cull-m-rite and the X-Tools scale take forever to give an accurate weight when you hang a fish on them which makes this method annoying. But the Salter digital is fast. Fast enough to get a weight on a wiggling pissed off bass if it sits still for just a few seconds. With that scale and the Ardent system culling is a no brainer. The only mod I made on the buoys was sharpening the metal pins so they go through the bass' skin easily, like a hook does. This system is worth checking out.


http://img.tacklewarehouse.com/ProductImages/ARSMC.JPG

Balance beam solves the problem of using a scale to cull. I have experienced fish change weight in the well because they start coughing up crawdads or bait fish. .1 ounces can make the difference from getting a check or not.