More than 8,000 young pallid sturgeon will be sporting tags and swimming in the wild by the end of the week.

A three-day tagging marathon is scheduled to wrap up today at Garrison Dam National Fish Hatchery in Riverdale. The project will send approximately 8,400 endangered pallids to Montana rivers.

Volunteer crews tagged 2,500 of the 10-inch, or so, pallids on Monday and did almost 4,500 Tuesday, Rob Holm, the hatchery manager, said Tuesday afternoon. The plan is to finish today, he added.

Fisheries crews from Montana had picked up the first batch of about 2,000 tagged pallids Tuesday and were planning to release them along the way back to Miles City, Mont., Holm said. Other pallid releases are scheduled above Fort Peck, Mont., and other stretches of the upper Missouri River.

"The fish have a tendency to go downstream. We'll take them upstream until we find out where they want to go. With the (snow) melt, we should have a rise that will push them downstream and we will let nature sort out where they want to go," Holm said.

Each pallid will wear a PIT, or passive integrated transponder, tag that has a unique number code and allows researchers to scan the tagged pallid to get information such as its age, size, when and where it was stocked and its origins.

Crews also are removing one of the bony plates on the right side of each of the fish to serve as a visual signal that the pallid is carrying a tag.

"It something they can't regenerate. It will look like they have armor and are missing a plate," Holm explained.

The tagging effort is an attempt to restock the prehistoric fish that is protected under the Endangered Species Act. An estimated 200 adult pallids live in the stretch of the Missouri above Lake Sakakawea, Holm said.

These young pallids are the last batch of the hatchery's 2006 spawning project.

When they are gone, fisheries crews will head out soon in hopes of netting up to two dozen adult pallids for spawning.

"We're also doing paddlefish. So we will have lot of big fish here in April, May and even June," Holm said. "It will be a full house."

(Reach outdoor writer Richard Hinton at 250-8256 or richard.hinton@;bismarcktribune.com.)