Paddlefish season opens March 15 with new MDC tagging project

Conservation Department asks snaggers to report tagged fish and get rewards.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – Missouri’s annual spring paddlefish snagging season is a popular pastime for thousands of anglers starting March 15 and running through April 30. The state’s major paddlefish snagging waters include Lake of the Ozarks, Harry S. Truman Lake,

Table Rock Lake, the Osage River below Bagnell Dam, and the Missouri River. The season for the Mississippi River is March 15 through May 15 with a fall season of Sept. 15 through Dec. 15.

SNAG A TAG – GET A REWARD

Yasger is leading a new five-year tagging project by MDC to help monitor paddlefish harvest rates and improve species management. The project began this winter, and success depends on snaggers reporting tagged fish.

Yasger explained that, from January to mid-March each year through 2019, Department staff will place numbered metal jaw tags on about 2,000 paddlefish netted in each reservoir — Lake of the Ozarks, Truman Lake, and Table Rock Lake — and about 1,000 fish netted in the Mississippi River. All fish captured are weighed, measured, jaw tagged, and released.

She encourages snaggers to report all tagged paddlefish and to NOT remove tags from undersized (sublegal) paddlefish.

“We will send a special ‘I caught a Missouri paddlefish!’ t-shirt to each snagger who returns or reports their first tag on a legal-sized fish,” Yasger explained. “Rewards will not be given for sublegal fish. All returned and reported tags for the season will be placed into drawings each summer for a small number of cash prizes with a grand prize of $500.”

Tags or photos of tags from harvested paddlefish must be submitted for rewards. Snaggers must include the following information with each tag:

Paddlefish season opens March 15 with new MDC tagging project