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How To Determine The Age Of A Fish
This is some really neat and useful information that will allow you to determine the age of a fish. So how can we determine a fishes age? Each fish holds that information on each and every scale of its body.

Scrape a few scales off of the next fish you catch and then use a jewelers lens or something more powerful to magnify the fish scales. You will notice that each scale has a series of rings on it, one inside the other, like the rings of a tree. Also like the rings of a tree, one ring is added to each scale per year.

Like many other living things fish grow rapidly at different periods throughout the year and then slow down at others, at times they even stop growing. The time period in which the fish stops growing, normally winter is when an additional ring will be formed on its scales.

The exception to this rule is fish that live in warm climates, which dont see drastic temperature changes during each seasons change.

The space and size of a ring can also indicate how much growth has taken place within the fishes life during the past years.

This aging method doesn't work very well with catfish

I thought you just cut them open and counted the rings.

WAR

This aging method doesn't work very well with catfis

Rick
The best way to determine fishes age is to remove the otolith. This is an inner ear bone and must be prepared and then examined under a microscope.
The older the fish the more chance of innacuracies in aging because the older rings tend to become indistinct and more difficult to count. Also this method guarantees the fish will not get any other rings

Hey Robby. Are you an catfisherman or an ichthyologist? Good info there.