There is a way to age fish by the scales but I can’t tell you how. We tried it when I was in college and I don’t thick any of us in the class could do it and even my professor was struggling. But what I remember is: it is not as accurate in the south because no distinct growing season (up north it is a little more accurate because of the distinct growing seasons), there are a couple of different areas where it is best to remove the scale but I can’t remember exactly, also I was told if you can get a image of the scale to where you can put that in a projector and project a large image of the scale on a wall it makes it easier to age the scale, and most importantly my professor told us it is not as accurate as aging a fish using the otolith and that it is very difficult. So that is why I age fish using the otolith. However you have to kill the fish to extract the otolith. I age the otolith by grinding down the otolith to where you have half a otolith, then I mount it on a microscope slide, then grind the otolith down to where I can see through it with a microscope. I’m sure an expert will chime in on how to age a fish using a scale. You may also want to just calculate the relative weights of the bass and use that to determine if you should harvest the bass or not. You can go to our website to get the formula on how to calculate the relative weight and I also have some pictures of extracting the otolith out of some bass. http://www.lakework.com

You can't judge a fish by looking at the pond--Bo Diddley