dumb question

[Fishnngolfn]

Originally Posted by carolina-rig-01

it's not the same though. a fish will raise the water level and in a 5 gallon bucket will weigh more. however in a livewell when the water raises it runs out the overfill drain so you are losing the wight of the water the fish displaces. i think the same thing goes for the flw weigh-in theory. one thing i don't understand about the flw weigh-ins is how they get accurate weights when a fish should weigh less in water than it would out of water.

i agree that we are thinking too hard about this but it was fun to get all the "smart" people at work scratching their heads over this question.

Noone said that some of the water is lost through the overfill drain. It is really simple if you negate the loss of water to the overfill drain. It doesn't matter if the fish in the water or not. If you add 30 gallons of water to a livewell and then add 20 lbs of fish to the livewell, then you have added 30 gallons (~240 lbs of water) plus 20 lbs of fish. It doesn't matter whether the fish are floating or sinking or how much air is in their bladders. You have added 260 lbs of weight to your boat.