I appreciate the comment Snipe and especially the details of the method you are employing. Thank you for sharing this.

I am a bit reluctant to comment further but I think it will help to provide context that after reading you will agree. I don't really see one method being "incorrect" and another "correct". A positive ID is extremely important if the sex has to be known. For example, if a person is attempting a female only BOW, positive ID is essential to prevent the misidentified males that slip through other methods. In such a case, I do see a method that positively identifies sex as a correct method. Some have utilized otoscope, which is more invasive due to the incision ... but if a fish is to pit tagged ... the incision can serve a dual purpose.

There are benefits to skewing a population of mixed sexed LMB to be primarily female. I recall Bill commenting that a population can recruit with 10% males. This a little greater than the failure rate of the straw method. Various methods employed by suppliers of fish who will supply sexed fish typically result in failures of identification (unless positive identification is employed). But if skewing a mixed sex adult population to be 90% female is a goal, the methods and the failure rate of such sourced fish is consistent with and supportive of that goal.

I guess what I am trying to say is that there are variety of methods that can be employed which efforts support respective but different outcomes. Some are more practical than others for people with varying goals and skill sets. Of great importance is to have a method that is effective enough to meet the goal and that is practical enough that one will employ it. What we don't want to do is be terribly wrong about the sex of the fish we remove or release. It would not be acceptable to remove 5 females for every male for very long. The opposite would be very helpful and conducive to a trophy BOW.

It isn't what we don't know that gives us trouble, it's what we know that ain't so - Will Rogers