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.
Interesting....
Well as I said above, this aging changes everything for our pond. We had no idea there was LMB older then 6 years in the pond.
