Fished yesterday morning from 7:30 until noon. Beautiful sunrise was worth the trip. Looked a bit before finding 2 schools of bruisers. Caught two 25" fish, including the tagged one below. The second school gave up three…two 26" and one 28" fish (photo below). Those 5 were all I caught. Water started at 46.5 and hit 51 by noon. Fish wanted nothing to do with any artificials…including my go to Gulp!s. They bit mud minnows fished on the bottom with no movement of the rod at all to avoid spooking them. The 5 came during the last hour of the outgoing until 1 hour past low.
If you read some of the studies done here in SC, along with studies in most SE states, data supports the belly tag placement for juveniles up to a certain length and shoulder placement on larger fish to increase retention. Additional studies show the T-Bar style internal tag retention rates seems to hold up well for a while, then dramatically drop off.
I’ll talk to Robert Wiggers and John Archambaut to get them to weigh in with the lengths they use make the placement determination.
