Recycling the Resource: Tag Return
 

May 12th, I caught this 31" striper which was tagged about 38 months prior in Delaware Bay. Not too shabby: 8 to 9" growth in three years. I scored this free hat. I didn't kill the fish or remove the tag. So, it is still swimming around, recording data so to speak.

I'm glad I was alone so nobody could witness the shennanagans I went through in the pre dawn dark. The tag was covered in weed. I'm scraping off the tag by flashlight, squinting with my old eyes at the microscopic writing on the spaghetti tag at the six digit tag number, and the reporting address with the five digit zip code. Now, my aging memory is so bad that I am writing all of this stuff in the sand above the high tide line so I don't forget it. By the time I finished the fishing there, I had the info sufficiently memorized; but I had to return to the sand writing three times to be sure of it.

Too bad they sent you a hat. A diaper would have been more useful.

How did you write in the sand? I find cursive is much easier in that regard.

Nice tag find & release btw!

funny .. I've tagged a lot of fish but have never caught a tagged fish .. Only one of my tags have been retired . They say less than 1% are recovered .. Nice work Alan .

Do they have cursive numbers that nobody told me about?

Alan, have you been in the productive area?

:rotf2:

Hey Alan ... I've started taking pictures of things I need to remember.. Even pricing something in different stores and comparing pics of prices ,model numbers ect. at home . My phone takes good pics and can enlarge the image . or do it the caveman way .. ;-)

Tagging Away
 

Thanks Tagger. I stick about 20 tags a year myself aand I haven't had a return in several years. I use the ALS spaghetti tags. I confine my tagging to the extremes of the season when the water is cold, and the fish can cope with out of water handling time better. I also tend to tag the larger fish, and only fish that are single hooked, and landed in a place that I can easily handle them (preferably on a big blob of seaweed or a low tide tide pool. And always when I am solo or at least not around Numbskull, who ridicules me awfully when I go through these shannanagans,

Yes ,, I use to tag in only one place where the fish were decent size and the water fairly calm . I tagged them right in the water . You know when they are really done and kind of turn on their side for you anyway . I was measuring ,, not weighing ..The only fish I had retired was caught 11 miles away 4 days later .

http://www.striped-bass.com/Stripert...gged-fish.html


Jimmy Fee and I have had fish that were tagged at almost the same time/place as yours, Alan.

Jimmy Fee and I have had fish that were tagged at almost the same time/place as yours, Alan.[/QUOTE

I'd be interested to know if your tag return comes back a Delaware Bay fish origin also.

Pretty cool catching a tagged fish, every year my pops or I get at least one in the rivers near the house, usually 26 to 34" fish. in 2009 we got 6 fish all tagged, a few different tagging groups.

How do you go about joining a tagging program? Something ive always wanted to get involved in.

you have doctors handwriting btw.