If you’ve been around the ice fishing scene in the midwest this year, you’ve most likely heard the word “barotrauma.” You may have seen the effects of barotrauma when fishing for crappies or walleyes in deeper water. Bulging eyes, bleeding gills or a stomach that’s extended into the mouth due to an expanded swim bladder.

According to wikipedia: Barotrauma is physical damage to body tissues caused by a difference in pressure between a gas space inside, or in contact with, the body and the surrounding gas or liquid.^[1][2] The initial damage is usually due to over-stretching the tissues in tension or shear, either directly by an expansion of the gas in the closed space or by pressure difference hydrostatically transmitted through the tissue.

Last May, I attended the MN FISH Summit at Clam and the topic of barotrauma was brought up. Jeremy Smith from Lindner Media and Marc Bacigalupi from the DNR discussed plans for a future study that was born from a group of stakeholders that were part of a panfish workgroup. This coalition of citizen anglers talked to biologists from the DNR about the effects of basin crappie fishing. Finding crappies deeper than 25 feet were becoming more common and with the increased popularity of catch-and-release, the worry was that anglers could be killing more fish than if they just kept their limit and left. Without specific quantitative data to support this, it was mostly a belief from observations and other research done over the years.

So the idea to do a pilot study was born. It was filmed in early 2023 and then Angling Buzz released a video showcasing the work in early 2024. Aaron Wiebe from Uncut Angling put out a video showcasing what he felt were flaws in the methodology.

So a podcast series on barotrauma ensued. You can watch our discussion with Jeremy Smith here, then watch our show with Aaron Wiebe, and then watch our subsequent show with Dave Weitzel of the DNR. We cover all angles of this study.

Fast forward to this year….a second round of studies are taking place, including three days on the ice in northern Minnesota in mid-January. Some of the methodology from last year’s pilot study remained, while new methods were introduced. As the DNR mentioned in the Angling Buzz video, they planned to refine methods all along.

This week on the Sporting Journal Radio podcast, (click the link if you want to listen or subscribe) we talk to Jeremy Smith and Mike Hehner from Angling Buzz along with Dave Weitzel from the DNR to learn about this year’s methods and what the preliminary results are. I won’t give away all the details here (because I want you to listen lol), but I will say that Forward Facing Sonar, careful fish handling methods and underwater drones were used.

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Watch it here: