Why is Texas producing so many giant bass?

[Boomstick]

On 4/6/2021 at 11:14 AM, BassWhole! said:

Why is Texas producing so many giant bass?

 

I'm thinking it's all the people moving in from other states with folks who can fish.....  

I'm thinking it's more people from up north, even a few states going to Texas to try for a new PB. As mentioned many of them were out of state anglers, and Texas has certainly become a destination for people looking for large bass the past few years.

[Team9nine]

Certainly have to look at other factors as being important, though the effort TPWD has done in this area is commendable.

 

One big question to ponder is why has the state record not even been approached after 30 years of trying to create it? If I recall reading correctly, a 16.5 pound fish caught earlier this year was the largest documented in 22 years or so. Why hasn't the record been shattered by now?

 

To that point, genetics play a part, but the genes are already in the system, they're just being preferentially increased and spread in this case. But as Tom and RDB mentioned, even without intervention, the genes will still be around and show up - probably just not to the same degree.

 

Also look at the sporadic year classes of giants that show up at places like O.H. Ivie this year, but also happened, I believe, two other times before (2010 or 11, and one other?). Why no giant fish flurries in between all those other years? One theory, as has been studied by Dr. Gene Wilde, associate professor of fisheries ecology with the Wildlife Fisheries Management Institute at Texas Tech University, is that the weather and water conditions play a large role in this happeneing, and you only get an ideal mix of those every so often. His work tied it to an El Nino effect, but I'm not sure if the question/work has been followed over the years to see if some of these more recent "outbursts" of big bass followed a similar pattern.

 

Another factor is probably pressure and leaving the fish in the system. I believe this was a big problem in Cali, but you obviously can't break the record of 18+ pounds if you remove or kill all the 13-15 pound bass first. They have to stay in the system living and growing just like they have been before that point to have a chance at becoming the record. I'm just not sure given all the social media hype and instaneous news feed that most of these giants get the chance to escape that window.

 

And now to add to that, with forward facing sonar technology, what used to be the last largely untapped realm of big bass, the world of open water suspension and evasion of angling pressure, has now begun to disappear. I think you'll see a couple more great years of big catches thanks to this technology, but iin the long run, it will eliminate that last realm of seclusion and make it even tougher for these fish, and the lakes, to pump out giants...at least giants that can be caught.

 

Anyway, just a few thoughts I wanted to throw out there on the subject.

[Catt]

50 minutes ago, Team9nine said:

but you obviously can't break the record of 18+ pounds if you remove or kill all the 13-15 pound bass first. They have to stay in the system living and growing just like they have been before that point to have a chance at becoming the record.

 

After the lay eggs once all of the ShareLunker females are retuned the lake of origin. As the biologist mentioned in the video ShareLunker bass have a survival in the high 90s.

 

With this new forward looking sonar I can see a state record in the near future.

[RDB]

9 minutes ago, Catt said:

After the lay eggs once all of the ShareLunker females are retuned the lake of origin. As the biologist mentioned in the video ShareLunker bass have a survival in the high 90s.

True...and you could argue that tournament anglers running around with 8, 9, 10 pound fish in their live wells all day is more harmful than a handful of lost ShareLunkers that may have died anyway.

[Team9nine]

49 minutes ago, Catt said:

 

After the lay eggs once all of the ShareLunker females are retuned the lake of origin. As the biologist mentioned in the video ShareLunker bass have a survival in the high 90s.

 

With this new forward looking sonar I can see a state record in the near future.

 

Totally understand, and I know they do everything in their power to treat those fish like royalty, but that figure of 86 percent survival was from the past 5-6 years. I know they lost one this year and two last year, and I’ve also read the earlier years had considerably higher mortality rates.

 

I’m not trying to point fingers, but merely looking at the larger picture, which is everything is cumulative. So SAL loses 14% of it’s big bass, then add the mortality of every big bass caught and carted to a weighing station for verification that ultimately ends up dying (read several posts to this affect going on now). Plus add in every fish that perished because big bass are being held in livewells for hours so they can all be held up and video/photo’d together at the end of the day for YouTube and Facebook glory.

 

Simply pointing out that every dead big bass is one less chance at a record, and that a variety of circumstances that weren't around in the past are making it more and more unlikely for another record to happen...but I’d still like to see it happen ?

[RDB]

4 minutes ago, Team9nine said:

(read several posts to this affect going on now).

Sounds like you are following those threads as well.  There are some passionate opinions but some of the replies are hilarious.

[J Francho]

Aren't all those hurdles present everywhere else there's bass?  To me, it's a level playing field, though Texas seems to actually do something to improve the fishery.  I don't see that anywhere else, unless you're talking trout.

[WRB]

Authentic 18 lb plus bass are extremely rare fish. Texas produced 1 and that should tell you just how difficult it is to reach 20 lbs. 

Florida State Record is under 18 lbs, 1 bass 20 lbs unable to be authenticated caught legally in 1920.

California has produced more 18 plus bass then anywhere in the world. That tells you it's the Climate certainly not the management. Catch & Release has benefited giant bass populations to some extent. As stated before I caught my giant bass using lures and techniques that didn't alarm these wary bass of my presence. I doubt these giant bass ever looked at a hair jig with 4” custom pork trailer mistaking striking it. Butch Brown spent hundreds of hours methodically fishing custom tuned and painted trout swimbaits fishing a tiny deep 1/2 long after bay.

It took eons for Florida strain LMB to evolve into the bass they now are. FLMB are a different bass the Northern LMB. Different scale count, different longer skeleton, different prey preferences, different water temperature tolerances and most important behavior. 

I am sure hundreds of dedicated anglers target giant bass, more anglers then the numbers of giant bass available to catch. Rare Giant Bass.

Tom

 

[Catt]

On 4/7/2021 at 2:13 PM, Team9nine said:

Simply pointing out that every dead big bass is one less chance at a record, and that a variety of circumstances that weren't around in the past are making it more and more unlikely for another record to happen...but I’d still like to see it happen ?

 

While I do agree with what you wrote you forgot to mention that without ShareLunker none of these bass would exist.

 

As for the yo-yos on social media I don't watch or read anything they post.

 

One also must consider what @RDB posted not every double digit is entered into any program. Every double digit I've caught was never recorded anywhere...I'm not that vain.

[RDB]

3 minutes ago, Catt said:

 

As for the yo-yos on social media I don't watch or read anything they post.

 

Every double digit I've caught was never recorded anywhere...I'm not that vain.

You should follow for the comedy relief.  Some of the exchanges are quite entertaining.

 

I don’t use ShareLunker program submissions for vanity, I use them to draw traffic away from the lakes I want to fish ?...JK.

[Team9nine]

2 minutes ago, Catt said:

 

While I do agree with what you wrote you forgot to mention that without ShareLunker none of these bass would exist.

 

Guess the only thing I'd quibble with is the use of "none." Texas started stocking Florida bass in 1972 well before the Sharelunker program began. No doubt some big bass as a result of those early stockings occurred, and would have likely continued to happen to some degree. We also don't know what the program would look like without SAL. Might have just been continued regular stockings similar to what Tennessee is doing. Regardless, pretty sure most would agree that Texas is putting in more effort than about any other state in regard to producing big bass.