The state’s tagging program allows everyday anglers to become citizen scientists, learning a bunch about saltwater species in the process. NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune Outdoors writer Todd Masson tagged and released a redfish this summer that spent the ensuing weeks growing like a weed. Photo: LDWF
by Todd Masson, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune
The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, in conjunction with the Coastal Conservation Association, runs a program that issues dart tags to anglers to pierce near the dorsal fins of saltwater species.
The program is free, but there is a bit of work involved. Anglers must stop what they’re doing, often in the midst of hot saltwater action, to load a tag, measure a fish, insert the tag and then revive the fish. The angler then has to fill out a postcard giving very specific information about the fish, its condition and its location.
Some anglers tag everything they catch, while more greedy anglers like me tag only fish we have to release because of size or creel limits. If a 15-inch redfish or 11 1/2-inch speckled trout comes over the gunwale, it’s going to spend the rest of its life with yellow adornment.
All that work paid off this weekend when I got a letter in the mail from the TAG Louisiana program telling me the first of my 50 or so tagged and released fish had been recaptured. It was a 15 3/4-inch redfish.the fish at recapture was 17 inches in length. That means it grew 1 1/4 inches in less than a month! That’s an impressive growth rate.
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