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Information on the ShareLunker program, including contact numbers ( voice, text) answered 24 hours a day for anglers catching potential program entries, location of official weigh- in/ holding stations and tips on caring for big bass is available on TPWD’s website at www. tpwd. state. tx. us/ sharelunker one weighing 10 pounds or more— to seriously try grabbing and choking down a 17- inch bait.

But there are waters in Texas holding such largemouths. Lots of waters.

At least 62 public waters in Texas have produced largemouth bass weighing 13 pounds or more. Oftenmuch more. It takes a fish weighing more than 15.38 pounds to make the list of top 50 heaviest largemouth bass taken in Texas.

This is stunning when you consider that until 1980, Texas’ record largemouth bass was a 13.5- pound fish caught in 1943. For Texas anglers through the 1970s, a 5- pound bass was a monster, and a 10- pounder was … well, a dream.

Florida bass changed that.

In the 1970s, Texas fisheries division director Bob Kemp, using his own money, began importing Florida- strain largemouth bass and stocking them in Texas waters. Those Florida- strain bass, a largemouth subspecies, had the genetic predisposition to grow larger— much larger— than the northern subspecies largemouths native to Texas.

Mass introduction of Florida- strain genetics into Texas waters, increasingly enlightened fisheries management that included habitat enhancement and conservative harvest regulations coupled with bass anglers’ shift away from catch- and- eat to catchandrelease transformed the state’s bass fishery.

Today, almost every public water in Texas holds largemouths with Florida- strain genetics and has the potential of producing bass weighing 10 pounds or more.

Landing a largemouth

Some lakes manifest that potential more abundantly than others.

Lake Austin is one of them.

The lake over the past few years has produced a swarm of huge largemouths, including at least 18 weighing more than 13 pounds.

Which brings us back to Cowan fishing his homemade 17- inch plastic worm in Lake Austin this past Tuesdaymorning.

Cowan was working the worm along a steep bluff when he got a strike and set the hook into a fish that could eat a fullgrown water snake as a snack.

The bass Cowan landed measured 27.25 inches, had a girth of 20.5 inches and weighed 14.28 pounds.

We know this because Cowan kept the fish alive and donated it to the Texas Parks andWildlife Department’s ShareLunker program.

The ShareLunker program is part of TPWD’s efforts to improve the