Sandbass technique

I was fishing Whitney with my son in law this past weekend and we stumbled up on some sandbass schooling off of a shallow point. We threw out a topwater and spinnerbait and I caught one and it immediately reminded me of something a guide back in the 70's showed me and my brother. We had a trip with him and on the first stop on some schooling sandbass he caught one and when he brought it into the boat he had a balloon tied onto about 20 to 30 feet of fishing line. He tied that to the fish and released the fish back into the lake. We fished the schooling fish and caught quite a few and then they stopped. I asked the guide if the would resurface and he said not here. Then he pointed to that balloon which was now about 50 yards down the bank. We ended up following that balloon around for the next 2 or 3 hours throwing slabs and would be in good position the next 2 or 3 times they would come up schooling. In fact about 2 hours later we ended up right back in the same area where we started after following them around. When we had our limits the guide got the balloon and pulled up the line and the fish and cut the line and released the fish and thanked him for being our guide for the morning. Just wondered if anyone else uses this technique or if it was frowned upon for any reason.
The fish we were fishing for this weekend schooled for about 5 minuites and then were gone and we searched around with our depth finder but could never locate the school again.

I remember that practice along time ago, but had forgot about it.

I remember some old timers doing that on Belton when I was a kid. That was when all they had for electronics was flashers and paper graphs. It worked back then.

Found this on the TP&W web site.

Tagging Fish
It is unlawful to release into the public waters of this state a fish with a device or substance implanted or attached that is designed, constructed or adapted to produce an audible, visual or electronic signal used to monitor, track, follow, or in any manner aid in the location of the released fish. It is legal to place an identification tag on the exterior of a fish and release this fish back into public waters. Caution is advised as use of these tags can damage fish.

Sorry to be a party pooper.

Thanks so much for the info. I had a feeling that this was probably the case since I had not heard of anyone doing this anymore.

Not long ago they caught someone at Cedar Creek doing this.

When I was 8 or 9 my grandfather would let me troll around in a flat bottom bass boat around the channel at Stamford. I would always catch crappie in different locations so I tied a bobber on that I caught and watched it swim around over the course of a day. After collecting my data I went in for supper and told my grandfather what I had done and then he explained to me the law that I had broken. It was my first of many "good initiative, bad judgement" lessons I learned growing up. I sure did learn lot though!

Sandies always cause a commotion when schooling and chasing shad.
They are easy to spot for people and fish.
Bass will chase at a distance to pick up shad at the edges of the school,
and catfish will troll the bottom for what shad fall to the bottom.
Even the carp have learned injured shad behind schooling sandies are an easy meal