FWIW, I used national band tags (old #898) over twenty yrs ago on bass 10" and longer.>Never thought to use them on BG's.
They would have been too large,though. I had no guidance back then as to where to place them. My buddy and I put them on the lower lip,upper lip and on the gill flap and even the tail.
Later, we used floy tags on bass. A significant number of bass were re-caught with metal tags missing .It looked like they had been ripped out (caught on something?).Others had infections around the tag area. This happened with the round floy tags,also.
The floy tag had to be anchored correctly or it would work itself out,leaving an infected area on the fish.
Finally,I started clipping fins to tell me the year I was doing them. That has worked for me since I clip all fins of small bass (too numerous) to provide an easy meal for the big ones
Oh yea, we discovered with the metal tags that we had to clamp them with room to grow or we would find some overgrown by the jaw.Never had much problem reading the numbers on the tags,though.
Hope this helps you.
