51.5 Inch Recapture

With time winding down in September and only four more fish to reach our goal of 30, I am chomping at the bit. For the past several days we've had fog in the mornings with clear skies by 10AM. It has also been fairly hot with little wind. Today's forecast was high of 22C, cloudy, and a 10kmh SW wind. I got a good night's sleep to be well rested for what surely would bring fish number's 27, 28, 29, and 30 to the boat!

Boy was I wrong.

Most of our action has been coming early in the day. By mid-morning we did not see a single fish. It was proving to be a tough day, and we knew whatever action we would have would require a fair bit of work.

After a short trolling run early afternoon, Hedrik and I decided to fish a spot that recently produced a 45" for us and another for myself (fishing for fun) in late August. Hedrik and I were just discussing which side of this particular spot was more productive when the water erupted behind me. Hedrik's rod was doubled over and I knew this was no pike...

I didn't get a good look at the fish until it was headed into the net, but when I did I was... surprised. As the fish slid into the net I noticed it had a transmitter on it. Great! We recapped a previous fish. Bummer that it wasn't a new fish, but oh well. I immediately assumed it was the same 45" as we caught a little over a week ago. When Hedrik grabbed the gill flap to unhook the fish, I noticed there was no hole in the flap which had been present on the 45". I jumped to the back of the boat and picked up my Bible [data book]. I asked Hedrik if he could read the transmitter frequency. I have a sheet in the back of my Bible that has all the transmitter frequencies of fish we've tagged and their corresponding numbers in the study (e.g., Fish #1, Fish #23, etc.). Hedrik replied to my query with "150-dot-460"...

Hmmm. Looks like fish number... 27? What? That's not the 45 incher! So I flip to Fish #27 and look at its length. "Hedrik?" I ask. "Guess how big this fish is?" Hedrik caught the 51.5 incher we tagged on August 14th. The fish was originally captured on a bucktail in the figure-8. Today, it was captured on a large plastic bait (Bulldawg) also at the boat (not quite in the figure-8, but close). The fish was caught at the opposite end of the island and probably moved an estimated 1-1.5km (0.5-0.75 miles) to where it was caught today.

We removed the transmitter as its recapture answers the study's main question: Do fish survive the catch-and-release process? According to this fish, they most certainly DO.

One photo shows the fish when I caught it and the others of Hedrik taken today. Enjoy!