Michigan Anglers Asked to Help With Tagged Fish

Department of Natural Resources, Lansing, MI — November 16, 2021

Have you caught a trout or salmon in Michigan that had an adipose fin-clipped? If so, it could contain a tag with valuable information.

Through mass marking assistance by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, several Great Lakes states, including Michigan, mark popular gamefish like steelhead, Chinook salmon, Atlantic salmon, brown trout, and lake trout.

The adipose fin – a small, fleshy fin behind the larger dorsal fin – is found on only a few fish, including trout, salmon, and catfish. Most trout and salmon with an adipose fin clip also have a coded-wire tag in their snout. The tag is small, like the tip of a lead pencil, so it must be removed by lab technicians. If anglers catch an adipose fin-clipped fish, they should turn in the head at a local drop-off station in Michigan.

What to Look For

You can help in the monitoring of Great Lakes salmon and trout populations. Many of these fish have been marked with a small coded-wire tag, which is implanted in the head of the fish, but invisible to the naked eye.

If you catch a fish that is missing only the adipose fin (see photo, above), it is possible that it has had a coded-wire tag implanted into its snout. Please use the coded wire tag recovery form to record the following information: date caught, location caught, species, length, weight, sex (if possible), and fin clip.

Remove and freeze the fish’s snout (part of the head from behind the eyes forward), and drop off the snout along with a datasheet at a drop-off location, or call 517-284-5830 for a list of local sites. Please do not put it in the mail!

All samples for CWT processing end up at the Charlevoix Fisheries Research Station. Once the samples arrive, tags are extracted, read under a microscope and both the angler and fish data are entered into a large database. If a tag is extracted, the fishermen will be notified of the age and stocking location of their catch.

“We have creel clerks at some ports, but there are several areas where we don’t have staff, including on river systems with unique fisheries, such as Atlantic salmon or steelhead,” said Randy Claramunt, Lake Huron Basin coordinator with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. “To get enough tag returns to learn about these species, we need the help of our anglers to voluntarily turn in heads.”

According to Jay Wesley, Lake Michigan Basin coordinator, fish tag returns help biologists understand the survival, age, and movements of important sport fish.

“We are particularly interested in confirming the wild contribution of Chinook salmon to the fishery, movement and wild contribution of steelhead in lakes and rivers, and survival and movement of Atlantic salmon,” Wesley said.

DNR Customer Service Centers are open Tuesday-Thursday, 8 am to 5 pm

DROP OFF LOCATIONS