Eating tagged fish

[sandgroper]

Thats ok than, you keep releasing & i'll keep taking em home to eat!

[Billo]

Jeffo , i bet not many people can lay claim to catching the same fish twice !
Thats impressive

guys , you can do what you will ....if i could not read a tag cleanly ( not that i have caught a tagged fish yet ) and fear it would not survive ....yes , it would go straight in the esky and details checked out later .
BUT , if you do have a chance to release a fish that is already part of a tagging programme and record it's details ....why not ?

and as for not having a pen and paper handy ...yes , again , if i could not record details on site , i would also probably keep it to be able to give the data back on return .

There is always an exception to the rule
but if you could record the details on site and return the fish to the water ...why the hell not !

I am sure everyone can afford to throw the odd one back !? It's not like every second fish you pull up has a tag in it

[Daintreeboy]

#It's not like every second fish you pull up has a tag in it

That's cause they all die after release #

[Smithy]

If you don't have pen and paper handy most of us have mobile phones now. Write the details down in a text message.

[banshee]

I believe there is a Samson in WA nicknamed "Yo Yo",don't think it would have earned that name without atlest a few trips topside,the west aussies have embarked on a prety extensive taging program with there samson in the last year, will be interesting to see what happens in the coming years.

[sandgroper]

of course i would throw a tagged fish back if it was undersize but if it was like a massive snapper than no I wouldn't release it. If it was just ova size than yeah I would release aswell, I would have to have been catching a lot of bigger fish that day to release a whopper tagged fish.

[Burley_Boy]

If the issue is that keeping it means one less tagged fish in the water thus no more info from that one thus intead of arguing about keep or no kee,p shouldn't the discussion be why don't we all tag fish?

I don't count because I never catch any!

[Hooker1]

Who uses all of the information from the years of tagging Marlin? The Marlin used to belong to the amateurs due to the high mercury content. Since the mercury content doesn't kill us anymore the Professionals can catch them. With the data collected from returned tags they should be able to target them wherever they are at any time of year. Just like the Southern Bluefin Tuna (how many of them get caught now?).