Fishing for Cash

$10,000 rockfish awaits a lucky angler

The state launched its seventh annual Maryland Fishing Challenge yesterday, and once again, there are tagged "Diamond Jim" rockfish swimming around the Chesapeake Bay worth up to $10,000.

Eight boats ferried Department of Natural Resources biologists around the bay yesterday as they caught and tagged 200 rockfish.

"We're not trying to make this a reason to go fishing, it just makes it more fun," said Marty Gary, a DNR fisheries ecologist who runs the contest.

I don't really know how many stripers are out there in the Bay this time for year, but in the past I have seen schools that must have contained hundreds of thousands.  Surely several million stripers occupy the Maryland portion of the bay this time of year.  So the individual odds of catching one of the special tagged fish is pretty small.  It's not enough to make me go fishing on a day I ordinarily wouldn't. But I wouldn't pass up the cash...

First, you can catch a rockfish that's tagged with a chartreuse plastic tag. The fish is either Diamond Jim, worth $10,000, or a Diamond Jim "imposter," worth at least $500.

 Above is a picture of me with a tagged striper I caught a few years ago (2001).  You can see the tag trailing down below.  It was an orange tag originally, but it had been in place a long time and was covered with  algae and bryozoans.  It was placed in the fish to monitor their migrations.  For returning the tag I was was given a free hat.

Two hundred tagged fish will be released at the beginning of June, July and August, for a total of about 600 fish. If June's Diamond Jim isn't caught, he'll turn into an imposter. But a new Diamond Jim for July will be worth $20,000. And if July's Diamond Jim also isn't caught, he also turns into an imposter and the August Diamond Jim will be worth $25,000. If no Diamond Jims are caught, then the prize money will be split among the anglers who caught imposters.

Another way to win is to catch a fish of any species worthy of a state citation from the DNR. Some examples of citation fish include a 40-inch rockfish from the bay, a 21-inch freshwater largemouth bass or a 9-inch blue crab from the bay. (Yes, you can win a fishing contest by crabbing.)

Even $500 would buy a lot of gas for the boat.