No abstract

Standard-length coded wire tags (1 mm long x 0.25 mm in diameter) were injected into the cheek musculature of 240 fingerling (47-128-mm-long) largemouth bass Micropterus salmoides. After 9 weeks, tags remained in all of the 200 surviving fish as well as in all 19 of the dead fish examined. Histological analysis indicated that the tissue surrounding the tags was healed. Cheek tagging with coded wire tags appears to have considerable potential for permanently identifying specific groups of largemouth bass. Although the originators of the coded wire identification system (Jefferts et al. 1963) foresaw its potential for use with various macroorganisms, its major use has been for permanently tagging salmonids and particularly Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.). It has become the standard method for evaluating production on the Pacific coast of North America where 126 million anadromous salmonid fish were marked with coded wire tags from 1981 through 1984 (Johnson 1985). The tagging methods described by Bergman et al. (1968), Ambrogetti (1976), Koerner (1977), and Duke (1980), which involve injecting tags into the snouts of juvenile fish, are those generally practiced on the Pacific coast. In salmonid fishes, the midline snout cartilage has been the designated target for coded wire tagging, but, as Zajac (1985) pointed out, tags may be more frequently recovered from fibrous, muscle, and adipose tissue between the olfactory bulbs. . 1968. A preliminary evaluation of an implanted coded wire fish tag. Washington Department of Fisheries, Fisheries Research Paper 3:63-84. Canfield, M., and S. Quinnell. 1984. Juvenile transplants. Pages 46-50 in Enhancement research on lingcod (Ophiodon elongatus) in Puget Sound. Washington Department of Fisheries, Progress Report 216, Olympia. Corten, A. 1985. Stock assessment of herring in the northwestern North Sea by micro-wire tagging. Effects of micromagnetic wire tags on the growth and survival of fingerling largemouth bass. Hudy, M. 1985. Rainbow trout and brook trout mortality from high voltage AC electrofishing in a controlled environment. North American Journal of Fisheries Management 5:475-479.