8 year old catches $100 bluegill

We had a happy kid at the family cabin last night. She used to like fishing when she was 4-5 years old but has since taken to other activities and fishing with dad was firmly in the “boring” category now that she is 8y. She decided she wanted to try again last night and did her own thing, bait, hook removal, etc. She fished with her brother for about an hour and caught many bluegills and perch that were keeping them entertained. Near sundown she started hollering “its got a tag!” and yelled for me to come over. When I got there, I saw it was a tagged bluegill and the tag was from the SD GFP and it said “$100 reward”. Of course we reported it and released the little bluegill right away. She got an email reply from one of the biologists at the local office this morning – sure enough she will be getting a $100 reward! She might be hooked for a while now…pun intended.

That’s cool great catch!

That’s awesome thanks for sharing!!

Love that! Curious what the purpose of the tag was – It can’t be just for the reward. Is it incentive for reporting the catch for research purposes? Tagging panfish seems odd, but now I’m definitely curious.

Yes! More tagging info if you can.

That’s great! (and thanks for not removing the tag-yes some do).
Did you measure it? It will be interesting to know where it was tagged compared to where you caught it.

Wonder if she will become a Pro Tagged Fish Angler?

ThunderLund78 wrote:

Love that! Curious what the purpose of the tag was – It can’t be just for the reward. Is it incentive for reporting the catch for research purposes? Tagging panfish seems odd, but now I’m definitely curious.

More info on the program. And congrats on the catch!

https://gfp.sd.gov/pages/bluegill-research/

-J.

That is cool. I am going to tell my son about this to see if he is willing to go out with me more.

We did not measure the fish, but it was tagged earlier this month and the length when it was tagged was 6.6 inches. I would estimate it hadn’t grown much since then. There are only 100 of them in the lake per the gfp site listed above (or less now that folks have harvested some). I caught one earlier in the month that did not have a reward associated with it…it hit a big jigging rap like a ton of bricks hahaha.

Look’s like a great program. I hope it leads to more fishing time with dad.

It’s a great country. Congrats to her. Use the cash to start her college fund.

Congratulations on the catch!

A great memory for a long time!
Congrats!

Sweet.

Thanks for the kind words – I will pass them along to the proud angler!