03-22-2004, 03:49 PM
RALEIGH, NC--Biologists with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission and U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service recently microtagged and stocked 12,000 juvenille largemouth bass into the Roanoke and Chowan rivers.
The collaborative tagging and stocking effort was the first step in a three-phase stocking effort to restore largemouth bass fisheries in the Roanoke and Chowan rivers, which were decimated by Hurricane Isabel last fall.
Small, magnetized wire tags were inserted into the cheeks of all 12,000 bass to determine growth, movement and survival rates of the stocked fish. Starting next month, the WRC will conduct periodic recapture sampling to determine if the stocking effort was successful. Biologists will use hand-held metal detectors to scan each fish collected to determine whether it's a tagged fish. The stocking evaluation will continue for several years.
In addition to last month's sub-adult bass stocking and tagging effort, the WRC says it will stock 1 million bass fingerlings this June in the Roanoke, Chowan, Pasquotank, Perquimans, Scuppernong and Alligator rivers. Of these 1 million fingerlings, 50,000 will be microtagged for research purposes.
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