[buntinbee]

I wonder if anyone on the forum could help me, perhaps Mike or one of the other fishery owners.
 The brown trout stocked on Aberdeen Angling Association water are easily identified by a blue spot on their underbelly. I was wondering how this was done, whether it was with some sort of marker pen or is it a dispenser. The reason I ask is that I was wondering if it was viable to mark salmon if catch and release was intended.
 I feel this would be valuable for at least a couple of reasons. Primarily for the Don bailiffs to be able to identify quickly what month the fish were caught and so be able to breed like with like i.e. spring fish with spring fish. This could be easily done by putting a dot for a month (three dots for March, five for May etc.) It would also be interesting to instantly recognize whether a fish had already been caught and returned, in which case a second series of dots could be added.
All of this would depend on the availability of the dye, I am fairly sure it should last a season on a salmon as it seems to last at least that long on a trout.

Regards, John

[Hamish Young]

The blue dye appears by means of a method of marking called "pan-jetting" this is done with a small needle which pushes the dye under the skin. The fish are generally quite small and often sedated/drugged when this is done and it would be difficult (nigh on impossible) for the angler to replicate in the 'real' world without damaging fish/self - it requires instruction.

Clipping the adipose fin or something like that might be simpler  IMHO.

[Hamish Young]

Ofcourse, there's always floy tagging 

[buntinbee]

Thank you very much for the informed reply Hamish.
 That's a pity, it would have been great if the fish could have been marked quickly without doing any damage to them at all. I have been to a session up at the Don hatchery where we were shown how to tag fish, and to tell the truth I wasn't altogether comfortable with the process. If it had been a simple matter of clipping a tag to a fin ok, but it actually involved punching a needle down into the fleshy part of the back beside the fin.
 Perhaps if someone could come up with some form of stapler that could clip a small tag onto the back fin or upper edge of the tail which could be colour coded according to the month. I am sure this would be of great benefit to not only the Don. It would be of great interest to see how many times a salmon was caught during it's stay in freshwater. I'm sure that anyone catching a tagged salmon would be far more likely to return it if they could identify it as having already been caught and returned.

Regards, John

[Hamish Young]

I'll have to ask Jim Kerr about that - I've not seen what they were/are using. There are simple floy tagging systems not unlike staplers out there.