I've been game fishing for a few years -weighed in a few and tagged a lot more. At no time, at any weigh in from many of the clubs in  NZ have I ever seen or being asked to produce my lure/trace/line....Never entered a competition.
Tell me....if I tag a fish, does it have to comply with IGFA? I've told skipper the line weight but he's never checked my leader length or hook placement and he's filled out the card.

What if you had a reel with an IGFA 37 kg mono..500 metres, then an undershot of 600 metres of 60 lb braid.....is that an all tackle outfit? Never ever seen the braid after numerous fish.

Any other curly ones?

agree

Roy, tagging is primarily for research. If you aren't fishing for points then you can do whatever you want, but and it's an interesting but............ gamefishing is a sport based on rules so that like any other game you can gauge your own expertise.

There's nothing in any of the rules that makes catching fish any harder and if you do end up fishing in clubs or tourneys then you are used to fishing within the rules.

I notice guys say you can lie and cheat. Yes you can just like you can In most things in life. Gamefishing within the rules is largely down to trust.

mangre 2 wrote: Agree, Peter we all live within a code, and 99% do.

Suppose if you belong to a fishing club that is a member of the nz sport fishing council ,you fish under there constitution . Rules/ regulations etc .If you don't,  you do what you want .

Bay of islands will check your gear when its a fish that may qualify for club pins, trophy's etc. certainly did for our last few qualifying fish.

the other reason for staying within the rules is if you manage a World or NZ record and you haven't stayed within the rules then its just another fish, never to be recognized...
your call in the end but its not hard to stay within the rules, seriously now is it????
just pure lazyness or not concentrating on tackle when setting it up...

  
 

BlackBill wrote: Bay of islands will check your gear when its a fish that may qualify for club pins, trophy's etc. certainly did for our last few qualifying fish.

Weighed in a couple at Paihia and never got checked.....a courtesy weigh for Raglan SFC, though.

I am totally with Weighmaster on this. If you belong to a club which has trophies/pins or you are interested in records and you want your fish to count towards trophies then you HAVE to fish to IGFA & NZSFC rules whether it being tagging or weighing a fish. If you are not interested in the club trophies/pins/records etc then fish how you like but when you get the fish weighed you need to tell the weighmaster it is disqualified.

Another issue which confuses some people (Usually people who do not belong to clubs) when we talk about NZSFC & IGFA Rules is we use the term "legal" they think we are talking about things in a Recreational Fisheries Regulation sense and go off at a tangent when all we a re talking about is whether it is compliant with NZSFC and IGFA rules.

how many peolpe have had there tag pole checked for length also. nzsfc has a max length of 8 foot yet i know of people using much longer in my club.