Are you doing a replica mount or did you harvest the fish?
Congratulations on the record!!!
Excerpt from Robert Crais' "The Monkey's Raincoat:" "She took another microscopic bite of her sandwich, then pushed it away. Maybe she absorbed nutrients from her surroundings."
Harvested the Fish Helps my weight removal goal for the year.
And is getting mounted. It's been a ride growing the LMB to this size. Looking forward to having it on the wall. I am not sure of it's age yet, 4 or 5 is my guess.
If you are having the fish mounted, talk to the taxidermist and have him save the otolith for you. Take it to the Fisheries Dept. at UWSP and they should be able to give you an exact age.
Thanks for the heads up, the taxidermist is doing this for me now. I'll get them soon and let you know how it turns out.
Originally Posted By: esshup
If you are having the fish mounted, talk to the taxidermist and have him save the otolith for you. Take it to the Fisheries Dept. at UWSP and they should be able to give you an exact age.
Aging of fish, especially old fish, using the scale method is inherent with errors which is why aging by the otolith method is more accurate and acceptable by the fish squeezer community.
aka Pond Doctor & Dr. Perca Read Pond Boss Magazine - America's Journal of Pond Management
Excerpt from Robert Crais' "The Monkey's Raincoat:" "She took another microscopic bite of her sandwich, then pushed it away. Maybe she absorbed nutrients from her surroundings."
I agree Dave this was a Senior Citizen, and even if the aging was off by a year or 2 this was a very old bass and changes everything for our pond. Huge Eye opener!
Aging of fish, especially old fish, using the scale method is inherent with errors which is why aging by the otolith method is more accurate and acceptable by the fish squeezer community.
Unfortunately, I missed the window to get the otolith from the fish and scales was my only option. By the time I read esshup message taxi was past that point.
As I know it, one of the main problems of reading scales is the ring production is not always consistent based on water temp and diet and the reader has to be objective as possible and has to be sometimes subjective in counting the crossing over marks. Lot of age rings on a smaller bass of 21 yrs (4.6lbs-20 in) puts the annuli and ridges of the scale rings very close together and quite difficult to see the true "crossing over" marks. Sometimes there are false crossing over marks. When the Ohio DNR switched to reading otoliths instead of scales for walleye, it made a big difference in the aging results. The scale method was considered inaccurate.
aka Pond Doctor & Dr. Perca Read Pond Boss Magazine - America's Journal of Pond Management