This past Friday, we were involved with the the Belle River Muskies Canada group attempting to catch musky to be tagged and fitted with radio tracking transmitters by the OMNR. The weather was perfect but the fishing had been slow so we headed out with fingers crossed along with about 25 other boats. Any fish caught were held in the fishermen's on-board recovery tanks and brought into the tagging station at Belle River Marina where the ministry biologists took over. The fish were electrically anesthetized (shocked into unconsciousness), weighed, measured, externally tagged, and fitted with a radio transmitter into a small incision in their belly. The fish were then revived and returned back to the lake by the volunteer fishermen. The ministry uses the location data to track the migration and movements of the fish in cooperation with a larger study group called GLATOS. They had hoped to tag 50 fish but the group was only able to bring in 26 suitable candidates despite everyone's best efforts. Many boats including us were skunked on Friday but we did manage to hook up on 4 fish early in the day that wouldn't cooperate. Here are some pics of the tagging operation.
