Tagged redfish grows like a weed in four weeks

tagged redfish
The state's tagging program allows everyday anglers to become citizen scientists, learning a bunch about saltwater species in the process. | The Times-Picayune Outdoors writer Todd Masson tagged and released a redfish this summer that spent the ensuing weeks growing like a weed. (LDWF)
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on September 16, 2013 at 11:04 AM, updated September 16, 2013 at 11:16 AM

It seems that every American who owns a smart phone is possessed by an insatiable desire to match three like candies and watch them vanish, only to be replaced by others. The game Candy Crush is more commonly -- and rightly -- called Candy Crack by those who simply can't get enough.

My latest addiction has run in a completely different direction. I'm hooked on tagging and releasing fish.

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.

All of that info is submitted back to program administrators, who store it in a database.

I signed up for the program in the spring, and have been tagging like a madman ever since. There's just something I find irresistible about learning the habits of a fish I've caught and released.

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.

So will any red over about 24 inches or any legal trout after I've caught enough for a good meal.

It's frequently a pain in the butt, but it's as addictive as Candy Crush.

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 I caught July 15 while fishing the Empire Jetty with Capt. Lloyd Landry.

The fish was caught 26 days later.

Two things struck me as interesting about the recapture. No. 1, the fish was caught at the same place I released it -- the Empire Jetty. Of course, that doesn't mean it spent nearly four weeks hanging out there, dodging baits from other anglers. I'm sure the fish went out into the Gulf to chase some schools of mullet, or spent some time over the oyster flats closer to Buras. But for whatever reason, it seemed to have an affinity for the Empire Jetty.

The second thing I found fascinating was that 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.

The angler who caught the fish elected to release it into Lake Crisco rather than back into the salty waters off of Empire, and I have no problem with that. On a slow day, I'm certain I would have done the same thing.

I'm grateful to him, though, for taking the time to call in the tag and share with the department information that increases the agency's knowledge of the species they're charged with managing, and, of lesser importance, for making my day.


Todd Masson can be reached at or 504.232.3054.