A method for directly estimating the tag-reporting rate of anglers
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Tag-reporting rates for marine recreational boat anglers were estimated directly by surreptitiously implanting, during routine creel surveys, fish tags into fish that had already been caught during October 1976-September 1978. Twenty-nine percent (177) of the 600 implanted tags were returned. Ninity-five percent of all tags returned were received within 100 days after they had been implanted. Significant differences (P< were found amoung reporting rates by anglers from different fishing areas and for different species of fish. No significant differences were found for reporting rates by anglers among seasons or years. These results indicate that use of reward tags in other studies has not fully corrected for nonreporting of recovered tags and, consequently, fishing mortality estimates based on them have been underestimates. The vast majority of anglers (96%) correctly identified their fish to genus and they reported fish lengths that were within +-76mm (SD) of those determined by agency staff.