Sportfish Tagging Program

[Dan23]

I was going though some old papers today and came across a certificate I got back in 94 notifying me that a Barra I had caught and tagged had been re-caught. Back then my Dad and I were in a club called Captag and we used to tag heaps of fish.

Just wondering if anyone on the site is involved with tagging these days and if there's a Brisbane based club involved?

Was really satisfying whenever we'd get a notice that a fish we'd caught and released had gone on to grow bigger and it was interesting to find out where they traveled to.

For interest sake, the certificate I found was for a 56cm Barra caught in the Fitzroy River, it was caught 253 days later, had grown 10cm and was captured 2km down river.

[obone]

When we go pelagic fishing we tag the marlins caught. It’s cool stuff. From memory, the tags we were using to tag all except blue marlin were from the company SunTag, and I think they are a branch of AusTag. I would love to have someone catch the same fish somewhere, but I think I only have my name to two fish, so there’s not much chance of that.

The blue marlin caught we tagged with a high-tech tag that was from a uni in the US. It measured depth and temperature of water, as well as tracking its progress via gps. After about 6mths the tip of the tag would dissolve and the tag would float to the surface where it would transmit all the information it had gathered back to the research station through a satellite.

Joel

[Dan23]

That sounds awesome. So you haven't heard anything about those tags then?

I wonder if they still bother tagging bream, flatties, snapper, cod etc or if they already know everything they need to know about them.

[obone]

No, I haven’t heard anything about them being caught . . . YET! Hopefully they’ll get caught.

I brought up this question a little while back, and the general consensus was that because of the costs involved, tagging was generally reserved for species that are particularly under threat, or for species that they know very little about (i.e. marlin and their migrations.) I’d say they would have a fair bit of information on those species that you mentioned, but I’m not sure.

You could start here to find out more about tagging: http://www.info-fish.net/browsetopics.asp?mode=viewtopic&name=How%20Suntag%20Works There is a fair bit of info about tagging and there is a phone number there that you can call to ask them some questions about what you want to know.

Joel

[ellicat]

Here as well.
/>http://ansaqld.com.au/tagging/

You can tag pretty much whatever you like.

[obone]

Who pays for the tags though ellicat? I’m sure if you brought them they’d be happy for you to tag anything, but I thought they gave them to you, hence they wouldn’t want you going around tagging catfish and mullet with their $1 each tags. ???

Joel

[ellicat]

There's a pdf attachment in the following thread -

'>http://www.australianfishing.com.au/index.php?option=com_kunena&Itemid=237&func=view&catid=16&id=43554#43554

Give them a call.

Quote from ANSA page

"The concept of Austag/Suntag is to provide members of ANSA the opportunity to contribute to knowledge on key recreational species that are important to our members. Data of importance collected by Suntag includes tagged fish, catch and effort, released fish rates and hooking locations (where the hook is lodged in fish) that are used in assessing fish survival."

So I guess it depends if they consider them a "key recreational species":laugh: