You’ll Never Believe I Threw All These Fish Back!

So far I have tagged over 900 speckled trout. This video shows some of the trout tagging madness!

Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.
-Henry David Thoreau

I know this was the case for me. After awhile, keeping boxes of fish got old and I just stopped doing it. The dock shot didn't matter anymore.

Giving back and doing something above and beyond mattered to me. This doesn't mean I've become a vegetarian or swore off eating fish.

Negative, Ghostrider. I love eating fish. I eat fish on the regular, but I don't need to keep a limit of fish every time I roll out, especially seeing how much I fish.

Nor do I feel the need to qualify myself as an angler or even a man.

Anyways, I really enjoy tagging speckled trout and watching them swim off! I am always happy to see them recaptured and even happier to see them released which, sadly, has only happened once.

I'll admit that I can become irked by someone who would derail altruism for their own petty self-interest, but this is rarely the case with anglers who caught my tagged trout.

This sounds crazy I actually caught one of my own speckled trout and he was in the "Love Tub" for an hour before I noticed him!

In fact, the cover photo is a pic of his tag. Crazy, isn't it?

It turns out that algae can collect on the tag and make the tag hard to see. So I understand that most people don't realize they've caught a tagged trout until they start cleaning fish.

I am just thankful they had the time and consideration to report the tag.

Anyways, watch the video above. It's some serious trout tagging madness!

But 900 Specks Isn't That Much If anyone thinks 900+ trout is a lot, then they have yet to meet Charlie Bush, who has tagged over 2,000 speckled trout last year and is a consistent Top Tagger for TAG Louisiana.

You can learn more about Charlie in Episode 42 of Inshore Interviews. He's really informative and has a lot of knowledge bombs to drop!

Interested in giving back? Want to learn more about tagging? Then check out my article, How to Tag Fish.

Captain Devin

About the Author

Devin is a former fishing guide and lifelong inshore angler. He founded Louisiana Fishing Blog in 2012 to share his ideas as a charter captain and still writes in it today. Since then he's created a fishing university — LAFB Elite — where he teaches inshore anglers how to safely navigate Louisiana's coast and catch more fish.

Learn more

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I'm a recent transplant from north Louisiana, and most of inshore fishing is brand new to me. I bought a boat last year and made a vow to learn as much as I can about the marsh, and feel like I've done just that!

I've bass fished a good bit so I have some basic knowledge and have been able to catch fish every time I've gone, just not numbers. I feel that this is taking me to the next level.

Time to catch a limit!

I love the ability to take the courses at my own pace, to be able to come back and revisit the info. That's because it's so much to try and digest for someone relatively new to inshore fishing.

The sections on fishing trip planning and execution inside Inshore Fishing 101 are priceless. They have given me so much insight into Captain Devin's thought process, and how to think about inshore fishing in order to find and catch fish.

You’ll Never Believe I Threw All These Fish Back!

About the Author

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