Weakfish Tagging Project

A few weeks ago Dewayne Fox of Delaware State Universality contacted me asking if we knew of anyone that could  help tag weakfish.  He and I both agreed we would have better chances of tagging a unicorn or an alien.   Granted there are weakfish around, but targeting them like in the days of old is a thing of the past.  The researchers,  Jacob Krasue and his technician Cameron Luck tried fishing for them a few weeks ago but with no luck and in all of the traditional spots.  I told them I would keep up with any information I could find to help better their chances when they returned this week.   They went out with Delaware Family Fishing on Monday and caught two weakfish they were able to tag.  I did have one suggestion for them but I would have to get up with a few people to make that happen and we were going to get very wet trying to net weakfish.

 

Yesterday, I joined Chad Betts of DNREC, Cameron Luck research technician, and Jacob Krause the head researcher on a weakfish tagging excursion.  The boys are here from NC state University, Jacob is studying weakfish and this tagging program has been set up to put transmitters in the fish that can be picked up by acoustic buoys.  The very same buoys that are used to pick up tagged sharks that were placed by Dewayne Fox’s teams a couple of years ago.  The boys did add seven buoys to the Delaware Bay just for this project.  We ran pull seine nets on Broadkill Beach today and managed to catch one weakfish that was large enough to tag and a huge variety of other fish.  The one fish they tagged today was named Rich, I am rather proud that I have a tagged fish named after me.  Funny thing, the one fish we did not catch was a dogfish.  Jacob said they are trying to study mortality rates and migratory patterns.  For years everyone has speculated why the weakfish disappeared, this research may help figure that out.  As far as migration how far do these fish actually move up and down the coast.  In other words how far south do Delaware weakfish travel and vice versa.  The financing for the Weakfish Tagging Project is made possible by the Coastal Recreational License Fund.   The boys tagged weakfish in North Carolina with conventional plastic fish tags, if found these tags can be turned in for a $100 reward.  I had a fun time helping these guys today and will tell you more about this in the next few days since we are still fishing for them to help find more weakfish to tag.  I have a variety of pictures below of today’s Weakfish Tagging Project.

Fish On!

Rich King