The Virginia Game Fish Tagging Program honored its top volunteers in an online ceremony Friday.

The program announced that during 2020, volunteers had more than 21,123 tags and 1,544 recaptures. Ed Shepherd of Yorktown was the top tagger, and during his years in the program he has tagged more than 83,000 fish, the program announced. The runner-up was Scott Vinson of Williamsburg.

Among recaptures, Shepherd and Vinson were also the leaders.

Shepherd was also leader in several species of fish, including black sea bass, red drum, and speckled trout.Other leaders by species were John Knight of Virginia Beach, black drum; Jori and Hayden Head of Seaford, cobia; Vinson, flounder; Joe Hudgins of Chesapeake, sheepshead; David Cohn of Virginia Beach, spadefish and triggerfish; and David Gladysiewicz of Greenbackville, tautog.

Among all species, speckled trout led again as the top tagged species, making up 50.8 percent (10,720 tags) of tagging effort in 2020.

The tagging effort i...