Hey guys,
Pete reminded me that we're supposed to turn in our wsb heads to be scanned for tags. It's totally voluntary and you don't have to do it if you don't want to. The place to go is 1933 Cliff Dr. room #9 in Santa Barbara. That's the DFG office. Ask for Dave Ono. If you're not in SB, there should be somewhere near you. I took me seabass head in there today from last night and watched the guy scan it. As it turns out the thing could possibly have a tag in it!!! The thing would go off almost everytime it passed over this one spot, so he's going to send it down to San Diego for further review. If it is tagged it'll be the largest fish reported with a tag in it, so that's pretty cool. The white seabass from the hatcheries are all tagged when they're 8 or 9 inches long (or something like that) just before they're released, and they like guys to turn in the heads so that they can be scanned for info so they know what hatchery the fish came from, how old it is, where it went, etc. I think it's pretty cool. There's only been less than a dozen reported with tags in them. This was the first seabass head I've turned in, so I wonder if a good number of these fish are tagged. I guess it's possible that a bunch of tagged fish could school together. The tagged fish probably aren't going to be much bigger than 10lbs. so those big ones I don't think are young enough to have been tagged. The ones we catch in the harbor are pretty much perfect size, so I'll be turning all mine in, and hope you guys can do the same.
-Brian