Our last monthly juvenile tarpon net pull of the 2024/2025 season took place on Saturday, April 19, 2025. We had a good turnout of volunteers, as pictured above. At the March and April net pulls, our focus, working with the Florida Fish & Wildlife (FWC) research team, was on tagging tarpon and snook, ideally over 12” in length. However, we only managed to tag one tarpon as part of these two net pulls.
FWC’s research objective with tagging is to track the movements of the fish, both within the Preserve creek and pond system, where there are six acoustic receivers, and in Lemon Bay and beyond.
The monthly net pulls use a very large, 600’ seine net, so they are conducted at two large open areas in Lemon Creek. The FWC researchers have continued their efforts to catch and tag fish by casting and using a small net in the creek system on the western side of the preserve. These continuing efforts have proven successful with one very large tarpon tagged in April and another 5 tarpon tagged in early May.
The FWC team has also focused on other ponds in the Preserve. Verna’s Pond, located in the central preserve, did not seem a primary “candidate” pond, but the FWC folks recently spotted juvenile tarpon rolling in the water there. The pond connects with other parts of the preserve pond and creek system, so the tarpon may have entered the pond via connecting culverts during the rainy season, when the water levels are a lot higher. They may have also arrived in the tidal surge water from last year’s Hurricane Milton that covered much of the Preserve.
On May 8, FWC researcher, Phil Stevens, his son, Logan, and LBC member Malcolm Collingwood launched the LBC Jon boat in the pond and their efforts were rewarded with two more tarpon now added to the 2025 tag count, bringing the total to 9.
The Jon boat also serves as a floating “surgical” clinic. Any tarpon caught in the small net are first measured. If they are of a suitable size, a small incision is made in their belly into which a chip and a tag are inserted. The incision is sutured, and the fish is placed back in the water, revived, and then released. The tagging process is shown in the photos below.
We expect the movement of tarpon in and out of the Preserve ponds to resume during the summer rainy season. It will be interesting to follow the adventures of our newly tagged tarpon. The juvenile tarpon net pulls will resume on Saturday, November 15, and any suitably sized tarpon or snook will be tagged.
