Musky Tagging

Musky with tatoos? Yep! Find out why the WV DNR tags these river predators. November 8, 2006 Reporter: Patrick McMurtry Videographer: Brad Rice

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These little girls are having the time of their life at the DNR's Palestine Fish Hatchery. With any luck they'll hook one of the muskies being tagged on this, one of the busiest days at the hatchery.

Chris O'Barra/DNR Fish Biologist says:
"We should handle between 3 and 500 fish today depending on the ponds and what we get out of them. For this year, we will raise about 2,000 advanced fingerlings-these are the larger fish that we're stocking."

Musky are only one of several species being tagged before the DNR puts them in the rivers and streams of West Virginia.

Give me one of those bad boys. This process, they're not actually tagging the fish, but they're cutting the back fins off, these little channel cats and they put them back here. If one of these guys are caught in a catch and release or somebody turns one in, they know this is a DNR fish.

But today, the stars of the show are the musky....They "are" being tagged.

Chris O'Barra/DNR says:
"Put a blue tatoo mark on the fin of the fish so we can determine if they are fish raised in our hatchery or if they were naturally reproduced in the streams or rivers. We'll go back, usually in the spring, and do electric fishing surveys in the area we are stocking the fish, in the rivers and streams."

Raising these future trophy musky takes a lot of work. So does the tagging process. The DNR couldn't do it without a lot of help from volunteers like Musky Inc members.

Jim Moore/Musky Inc. says:
"The DNR gives us an opportunity to come out and help them come. We're interested in musky, we like to see them grow up and get big. We've seen these advanced fingerlings are really helpful when they stock them. They allow us to be part of it and I think that's something we give back to them. It's just good to be here and do it with them."

In a few years, many of these 18 inch babies will be 50 inch trophies with some luck, maybe you'll find on the end of your line one day. Good luck!

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