My club is considering the tagging/marking of stocked brown trout in our river stretches to understand fish movement, overwintering etc.

Initial investigations with EA suggest that marking fish with a dye using a high-power jet gun is preferable. Apparently tagging, although more visible and longer lasting, it increases injury risk, as well as predation. Also, I am told that clipping the adipose fin can result in infections and loss of fish.

I'd appreciate to hear your personal experiences and lessons learnt in this area.

Many thanks

GF

PS: I had a look using the search facility, but was not able to find something very specific

Hi

I remember seeing a program a few years back, i think it was Canada or US any way..........

They stocked a river with fish breed from fish taken from that river , but all the restocked fish had the adipose fins hot clipped when only 1" long.

Anglers are "ONLY" allowed to kill fish with clipped fin's NOT the wild breed fish, always struck me as a excellant idea.

Sorry not much help to you

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I'd suggest the 'blue spot' route. Quick, effective and a simple matter to position the dot for different stockings.

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According to some on this site your brownies could all turn into Sea Trout mate
(seperate thread) might then be a waste of time.
Mate try the Loch Lomond Angling Improvement Association or seek advise from
The Enviroment Agency, they may keep you right.

We are doing this also. As lighthouse said Blue spots under the fish in the pale belly.As far as i am aware this is the most resistant colour as we have been told to expect some fading in time.
Sewinbasher and the guys on the Morrow are very clued up on this, and have been very generous with the there help and advice, as they have been doing it for a few years now. Our local EA didn't have a clue!

PS Sightbob Thats NOT what anyone has said..
They have said that all salmo trutta have the ability through need, or impulse to seek life in the sea. No one has said that all brown trout turn into sea trout. Some rich enviroments it doesn't happen at all, other unstable free stone rivers it seems the whole population, except a few persistant small males take this option.

Much appreciated. We were told by the EA that the dye lasts 12 to 15 months. Any idea about the cost per fish, if one chooses this route? Does the procedure require experienced staff, or can a party of volunteers administer the dye with the right tools?

GF

Greekfly

Contact your local EA office in Frimley. They will assist you and may lend you a panjet and some alcian blue dye. It costs about 0.000001p per fish so it's REALLY expensive. All you need is some plastic gloves to keep the dye off your hands as it lasts for several days, and about two minutes of instruction as to how to load the panjet and apply the dye. Simple!

Fantastic! "Simples"

I heard something in the region of 50p to 100p per fish! Hence, my question....

My club has used a blue panjet dye mark to identify stockies for seven seasons now. We started off by marking fish stocked in different parts of the fishery differently to monitor how far they move up or downstream after stocking.

Having collected some useful data on this we then changed to marking each year differently in order to monitor overwintering success. This season we stocked both diploids and triploids and marked to differentiate between them. Most fisheries that stocked adopted the same marking regime for year of stocking which helps validate the results.

As of next season we are just going to mark all stock fish the same and the purpose of this is the same as the over-riding purpose of marking stock fish which is to tell our members which fish they can keep and as a result we are confident that virtually no wild fish have been deliberately killed for 7 years and this has allowed the wild fish to increase to the extent that we have progressively reduced stocking by over 50% with no significant impact on catch levels.

Just for the record our date showed fish moving at least 1.5 miles upstream and at least 3.5 miles downstream. Overwintering fish ranged between 1% and 4% but is slightly unreliable as the dye mark fades and disappears into the 2nd year so some overwintering fish may not have been recorded.

Our fish are marked at the hatchery and cost a little more than the quoted figure but the benefits far outweigh the additional expense, at the recent AGM it was the members' view that marking stock fish was the single most important thing that the club had done.

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A Fisherman’s Diary

Sewinbasher,

This is impressive I will pm you if I may for more details. I do not believe in re-inventing wheels.

Thanks again for the information.

GF