A total of 1784 legal-size (≥356 mm TL) hatchery-produced red drum (Sciaenops ocellatus) were tagged and released to estimate tag-reporting levels of recreational anglers in South Carolina (SC) and Georgia (GA). Twelve groups of legal-size fish (~150 fish/ group) were released. Half of the fish of each group were tagged with an external tag with the message “reward” and the other half of the fish were implanted with tags with the message “100reward.”Thesefishwerereleasedintotwoestuariesineachstate(n=4);threereplicategroupswerereleasedatdifferentsiteswithineachestuary(n=12).Fromresultsobtainedinprevioustagreturnexperimentsconductedbywildlifeandfisheriesbiologists,itwashypothesizedthatreportingwouldbemaximizedatarewardlevelof100/tag. Reporting level for the “reward”tags was estimated by dividing the number of “reward” tags returned by the number of “100reward”tagsreturned.Thecumulativereturnlevelforbothtagmessageswas22.7(±1.9)100 reward” tags were returned. This finding indicates that only 56.7% of the fish captured with “reward” tags were reported in SC. The pattern was similar for GA where 19.1 (±10.6)% of “reward” message tags were returned as compared with 30.1 (±15.6)% for “$100 reward” message tags. This difference yielded a reporting level of 63% for “reward” tags in GA. Currently, 50% is used as the estimate for the angler reporting level in population models for red drum and a number of other coastal finfish species in the South Atlantic region of the United States. Based on results of our study, the commonly used reporting estimate may result in an overestimate of angler exploitation for red drum