Revamped ShareLunker program gains steam
The first seven weeks of 2018 have done few favors for the million-plus Texas anglers who target largemouth bass. From its start, this year has been an almost unbroken string of uncommonly frigid stretches connected by sieges of seasonably cold days filled with rain/ drizzle/ mist. They frequently have been made all the more miserable by blustery wind — a combination that keeps anglers off the water and makes cold-blooded bass less active as their metabolism slows in the chillier-than-usual water.
“The weather’s certainly been a factor so far this year,” Kyle Brookshear, bass angler and fisheries biologist with Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, said of the challenges bass anglers in much of the state have faced. “When it’s not raining, it’s 28 degrees. That’s not great for fishing.”
But this is Texas, home of the nation’s largest number of bass anglers and largemouth bass fisheries that rank as perhaps the best in the world. And this is late winter, when female largemouths are at their heaviest as they develop egg masses ahead of the spring spawn. It is when anglers can land some of their heaviest fish of the year. Many have.
Brookshear has seen evidence of just that in the results of the first few weeks of the revamped version of a long-running state program that partners bass anglers with state fisheries mangers in a cooperative effort to make largemouth fisheries and fishing even better.
Lake Conroe tops list
Through the third week of February, Texas anglers have entered almost 50 largemouth bass weighing between 8 and almost 13 pounds in the state’s ShareLunker program. Those fish have come from 24 bodies of water scattered across the state from its eastern border to its southern and deep into its heart. Lake Conroe, Houston’s “home” bass lake, leads the pack with nine entries, including a 12.65-pounder,
“I think it’s gone really well, so far,” Brookshear said of the reinvented and expanded ShareLunker program that began Jan. 1. “One of the objects of the changes in the program was to invite more participation from anglers. We’re seeing that.”
The ShareLunker program, which began in 1986, originally was aimed at integrating giant largemouths landed from Texas waters into the state’s hatchery production and research efforts. Anglers who landed a largemouth weighing 13 pounds between Oct. 1 and April 30 could keep the fish alive and lend it to TPWD, receiving a fiberglass replica mount of their fish as a reward.
If genetic testing proved the fish was a pure-strain Florida bass, a largemouth subspecies with the genetic predisposition to grow larger than the state’s native northern subspecies largemouth, TPWD staff attempted to artificially spawn the fish with a Florida bass male. (The huge bass are, invariably, females.)
Fry and fingerlings produced were stocked back into the lake of the maternal parent. Research has indicated those young bass can inherit their parents’ genetic predisposition to grow to extra large size.
Since 1986, anglers have entered 566 largemouths weighing 13 pounds or more in the program. Those fish have come from 68 Texas water bodies — a testament to the quality of largemouths available to Texas anglers and those willing to participate in a program aimed at further improving the state’s bass fisheries.
When Texas’ ShareLunker program began, it was unique in the nation. No other state had tried anything like it. Today, several states have programs patterned after Texas’.
While ShareLunker proved a great success, TPWD saw the 13-pound minimum as a very limiting factor to participation. The development and ubiquitous use of digital technology such as smartphones coupled with advancements in fisheries management technology offered TPWD the opportunity to radically revise the program.
The revamped ShareLunker now is a yearround program with four classes of entries.
It still will use angler-donated 13-pound-or-heavier largemouths in hatchery production but will accept only fish landed between Jan. 1 and March 31 for that use. Those fish are the ones that have proved to be the most successful at spawning in the hatcheries. Such fish are entered in the program’s “Lunker Legacy” category.
The other classes are “Lunker” for largemouths measuring at least 24 inches or weighing between 8 and 9.99 pounds, “Lunker Elite” for fish weighing 10 to 12.99 pounds, and “Lunker Legend” for 13-pound-orheavier caught outside the January-March window.
Anglers who wish to participate in the “Lunker,” “Lunker Elite” and “Lunker Legend” categories do not donate their live fish to the program. Instead, they enter the fish by creating an account on the program’s digital platform and complete online entry. Part of that includes a requirement the angler submit two photos of the fish — one against a rigid measuring board and the other showing the fish weighed on a digital scale.
Complete rules for the program, as well as links to download the ShareLunker app and instructions on how to help fisheries managers increase their genetic database of large largemouths by removing and sending a few scales from ShareLunker-qualifying fish, are available on the program’s website at texassharelunker.com.
24 sites so far in 2018
Anglers whose entries are accepted are rewarded with a “catch kit” that includes a program participant decal recognizing the category of the angler’s catch and a selection of fishing-related gear. As added incentive, participants also are entered in an end-of-year drawing for a fishing-related prize package valued at $5,000.
The first entry in the expanded ShareLunker program was a 9.1-pounder caught and released on Lake Dunlap on Jan. 1. Since then, 46 other entries have been certified, and several more are pending as of Feb. 16, Brookshear said.
The largest has been a 12.79-pounder landed from Marine Creek Lake, a small lake near Fort Worth.
Dunlap and Marine Creek are two of 24 Texas water bodies from which 2018 ShareLunker entries have been caught through the program’s first seven weeks.
“I’ve been really impressed with how many lakes are represented and especially how they are all over the state,” Brookshear said. Fish have come from Falcon Lake on the Rio Grande, Lake Alan Henry near Lubbock, “off the radar” bass lakes such as Stillhouse Hollow, Tradinghouse Creek and Hubbard City Lake as well as traditional trophy-bass waters such as Lake Fork and Toledo Bend Reservoir.
Lake Conroe has generated the most entries, with nine certified 2018 ShareLunker bass. A 12.65-pound entry from Conroe is the second-heaviest so far entered, Brookshear said.
“There are other Conroe fish that are going through the certification process, too,” Brookshear said.
Lake Fork, the state’s most high-profile big-bass fishery, has the secondlargest number of entries with seven fish.
Lake LBJ, a 6,300-acre reservoir on the Colorado River near Marble Falls, currently has the thirdmost entries with four.
Spread the word
Those numbers are almost certain to explode over coming weeks as a couple of factors come into play.
“As more anglers become aware of the expanded program, that’ll increase participation,” Brookshear said. One of the stumbling blocks to the revised program is its newness. Over its more than 30-year history, “ShareLunker” has become ingrained in Texas bass anglers’ mind to mean a program that accepts only largemouths weighing 13 pounds or more and donated to the hatchery program. Now, it means anglers sharing information on 8-pound-and-heavier bass throughout the year while still offering 13-pluses to the hatchery January through March.
“Awareness about the program’s new format is growing. But a lot of anglers haven’t heard about the changes,” Brookshear said. “That’s normal. I’ve heard from several fishermen who said they’ve caught qualifying fish but didn’t know about the program’s changes. But word’s getting out.”
Then there’s the weather.
After more than a month of unusually cold and rainy conditions that limited activity of both bass and bass anglers, winter slightly loosened it grip late last week. Air temperatures climbed into the 70s in much of the state. Water temperatures are nudging into the 60s. Daylight is lasting longer. Bass — and bass anglers — are shaking off their winter lethargy. Both are eying spawning flats and the brushsprinkled shallow along shorelines.
Things are going to get real interesting and real exciting on Texas lakes and in the state’s revamped ShareLunker program very soon.