Big bass show Lake Naconiche’s potential
One of the heaviest largemouth bass caught from Texas public water this year was landed a little more than a week ago, dead center in the sweltering two-month period many consider the worst of the year for taking jumbo-size largemouths.
But that is the kind of thing Texas anglers and fisheries managers hope to see from Lake Naconiche. Both have big expectations for the modest-size, nearly new reservoir in Nacogdoches County that produced what certainly is the biggest bass caught in Texas this summer.
Around dusk on July 29, David Rabalais was fishing a plastic worm in about 15 feet of water in 700-acre Lake Naconiche when he hooked and landed a behemoth bass. Rabalais kept the fish alive in his boat’s live well and arranged for a certified scale to be brought to the boat ramp where the fish was witnessed, weighed, measured and released.
The bass, which measured 26 inches, weighed 14.12 pounds. If certified by Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s angler recognition program, the fish will be the record for Naconiche, replacing a 12.54-pounder caught in April 2013.
It also is one of the heaviest — maybe the heaviest — largemouth bass taken from public water in Texas this calendar year. The heaviest entry in TPWD’s 2015-16 ShareLunker program, which ended April 30, was a 13.13-pounder.
he only other 14-plus documented from a Texas lake this calendar year is a 14.13-pounder caught March 3 from Toledo Bend and weighed at Fin and Feather Marina on the Texas side of the reservoir shared by Texas and Louisiana; it’s not noted from which side of the borderstraddling reservoir the fish was caught.
Summer surprise
The dog days of summer are usually real dogs for catching super-heavyweight largemouths.
The biggest bass are, invariably, females, and those fish are at their heaviest during late winter and early spring when they pack on the extra weight of egg masses just ahead of the annual spawn.
In summer, the fish are usually at their skinniest. And to escape the latesummer heat and intense sunlight, most large bass retreat to deep — sometimes very deep — water where they can be tough to locate and tougher to catch. Landing a truly heavyweight largemouth — a fish topping 10 pounds — is a rarity any time of the year but especially during July, August and September.
That Naconiche coughed up such a fish in July was a bit of a surprise to Todd Driscoll. That such a huge bass was caught there isn’t.
“A lot of people are expecting a lot of great things from that lake,” said Driscoll, a TPWD inland fisheries division fisheries biologist whose district includes Naconiche.
Naconiche has the makings of a tremendous fishery. Most of the timber and other vegetation in the reservoir’s basin was left untouched when Naconiche was impounded in 2009. This created a tremendous amount of nutrients for the lake as the flooded organic material deteriorated. The standing timber and brush also created abundant cover for small fish.
TPWD heavily stocked the lake with fish, including hatchery-produced Florida-strain largemouths with the genetic predisposition to grow larger than native largemouths. The agency also released several loads of adult Florida bass — fish weighing 3 to 7 pounds whose service as brood stock in TPWD hatcheries was at an end — into the lake.
That gave the lake’s bass fishery a tremendous “jump-start” that was helped by keeping the lake closed to fishing for almost three years.
The lake opened to public access in September 2012, with anglers restricted to retaining only bass measuring 18 inches or more, 4 inches longer than the statewide minimum — another move aimed at building a high-quality bass fishery.
It worked. Naconiche’s bass fishery — and its sunfish, crappie and catfish fisheries — are outstanding, Driscoll said.
The 14.12-pounder is almost certainly one of the hatchery “brood” bass released into the lake, he added.
Near-perfect habitat
Those fish along with stocked Florida bass fingerlings and natural reproduction give the lake a wonderful stock of bass that are growing fast in near-perfect habitat, where the surge of nutrients from deteriorating organic material “supercharges” the fishery — a phenomenon knows as “new lake effect.”
Because so much timber and other cover was left in the lake, it creates an interesting obstacle for boat-bound anglers. About half of the lake is so thickly timbered that it is hard for anglers in bass boats to reach some areas, providing additional sanctuary and protection for the fish. (That thick cover makes Naconiche a great place for anglers using kayaks.)
With the bass fishery hitting its stride, TPWD is moving to manage harvest to maintain the high-quality fishery.
Beginning Sept. 1, anglers on Naconiche will be allowed to retain only bass measuring less than 16 inches. Bass measuring 24 inches or more will be allowed to be retained alive in a live well for weighing on certified scales but must either be released or, if they weigh 13 pounds or more, donated to TPWD’s ShareLunker program, which uses the large fish in hatchery production and research.
“Naconiche is just now entering that time when a lot of good things are going to start happening,” Driscoll said.
It looks like they already have.