Tag You're It!
I wanted to share something with you that I'm pretty excited about. This past Friday (December 11) I took two of my favorite clients with Horizon Bank on a float trip on the Lower Colorado River (LCR). About ¼-mile from the takeout one of the anglers hooked a big Guadalupe bass that I quickly netted. We started taking pictures of the beautiful bass when I notice an odd growth up near its dorsal fin. Upon examination I discovered a tag covered in a layer algae, which I gently scraped away.
That’s when the light bulb came on in my head and I realized this is one of the fish tagged in this recent Texas Tech/TPWD Guadalupe bass study that All Water Guides has been involved with. I took a bunch of pictures for documentation—as well length and weight—before we released her.
On my way home to Austin I called Matt Acre, a graduate student at Texas Tech, one of the biologist who have dedicated the last 2-years to this study. I told him the story including the location and he could not believe what he was hearing. He stated that the particular type of tag was only used on 200 bass between Austin and Columbus Texas. He said there are literally thousands of Guadalupe bass every mile of LCR, so the odds of us catching one with a tag was astronomical. There are Approximately 100 river miles between Longhorn dam and Columbus—talk about a needle in a haystack!
Here are a few pictures of the fish. The clients could tell I was pretty excited—to say the least. This is one more unique story from the experienced guides at AWG who have a lifetime of knowledge and experience on this gem of a fishery.
Hope your weekend was as good as my clients and mine.
— Shea
