Big Tautog

We went back after tautog yesterday. We caught some big ones. The largest one we kept weighed in at 21.5 pounds. Stan Simmerman caught that fish. It was the same length as the current state record but did not have the girth of that fish. The largest that we released was about 15 pounds. Wes Blow had a release device that he had gotten from the Virginia Game Fish Tagging Program to try out. It releases the fish at a set depth. It seemed to work well. He also released one about 13 pounds so there are some big togs out there with tags in them. DNA samples were collected from each fish and tags were placed in the released fish.