Belize River Lodge’s held our second annual tagging challenge and it was a huge success! Leading up to the challenge, Chuck fished with Dirk a few days before and had beautiful weather – calm and sunny. They got into bonefish and mainly targeted permit, landing one. While getting a head start on the tagging, they tagged the bones, however, being excited about the permit, right after releasing it, realized it was not tagged – oops.
On Saturday, the day everyone else arrived, the winds picked up. We were a small group this year, with two anglers – Chuck and Craig, Dirk and Dennis (BRL guides) training a new guide, Mike, while fishing, Mick (BTT Board Member) and Mike Larkin (scientist from BTT) were the teams this year. Despite daily high winds of 20+ knots and frequent cloudy skies genetic samples were collected from 8 tarpon and 71 bonefish were tagged. Dirk and Dennis won the most bonefish award. Craig and Chuck won the most tarpon award. The largest bonefish was caught by Craig, and the largest tarpon was caught by Chuck. No permit were landed during the challenge.
Our 2013 Challenge was successful, we have 71 more bonefish tagged than we had before and everyone had a fun and enjoyable time, always the true challenge, to have fun. BRL also made a donation of $1,000.00 to Bonefish and Tarpon Trust for future studies. During the week, Michael Larking, Ph.D. gave a presentation on the findings of Bonefish and Tarpon Trust and how it relates to Belize. We were joined for the evening by George Myvette from Belize Fisheries and Monique Goldson from Belize Coastal Zone.
