Disappointing seasons for bass, red snapper
Afrustrating season for Texas’ ShareLunker program just wrapped up, and another is on tap for the state’s offshore anglers who target red snapper from private boats. The 2015-16 ShareLunker season, which ended its six-month run April 30, had only two giant largemouth bass entered — the fewest in the 30-year history of the program that solicits live, 13-pound-or-heavier largemouths for use in Texas hatchery production and research projects aimed at improving the state’s bass fisheries.
Texas offshore anglers who target red snapper also face a “fewest ever” season. When the recreational fishing season for red snapper in federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico opens June 1, anglers fishing from private boats will have only nine days during which they can legally retain the hugely popular reef fish. That is one day fewer than a year ago and equal to 2014’s shortest red-snapper season. Less than a decade ago, the recreational fishing season for red snapper in federally controlled Gulf waters ran 194 days.
Like the length of red-snapper season, the number of 13-pound largemouths anglers caught from Texas waters and lent to the ShareLunker program has seen a steady decline over most of the last decade. Few monsters caught
Over the previous 29 ShareLunker seasons, which are set to coincide with the months just before and during which females largemouths develop eggs and spawn, anglers annually have caught and donated to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s Freshwater Fisheries Center an average of almost 20 13-poundor-heavier fish to the program. Acouple of those seasons, more than 30 13-pluses were caught and offered to the program.
But since the 2010-11 season, when 19 fish were entered, the number of big bass in the program has steadily declined. The 2014-15 season saw six bass entered in the program; only the five fish entered during the 2000-01 season was smaller.
This year, that dropped to just two fish — a 13.2-pounder landed Nov. 2 from Sam Rayburn and a 13.13-pounder taken April 13 from Lake Alan Henry. For the first time in the program’s history, March, the month that has accounted for 239 of the programs 565 entries and considered the peak month for big-bass catches, failed to produce a ShareLunker entry. What happened? It certainly is not that the state’s trophy-bass fisheries have collapsed. Florida-strain largemouths, a subspecies with the genetic predisposition to grow much larger than the state’s native northern subspecies largemouths, have been stocked in almost every reservoir in Texas. And those Florida genes, first introduced in the 1970s, keep Texas bass fisheries pumping out scores of largemouths weighing more than 10 pounds. Since the ShareLunker program began in 1986, 65 public waters — lakes and rivers — in Texas have produced bass weighing more than 13 pounds. Before 1980, only one largemouth bass weighing more than 13 pounds had been documented in Texas.
But over the past few months, a combination of factors appear to have conspired against the ShareLunker program.
Some of the state’s best trophy-bass lakes saw horrible fishing conditions this winter and spring. Many were plagued with runoff from record-setting rains that swelled some lakes far beyond their normal levels with cold, muddy water. Some, especially in south and west Texas, missed the rain and continued to hold near record low levels triggered by decade-long drought. Not all catches offered
Still, a lot of huge bass were caught. Lots of “near misses” — bass weighing more than 12 pounds but less than 13 — were landed. And several 13-pluses were caught and not offered to the ShareLunker program, with most of the anglers opting to immediately release the fish after weighing and taking a couple of quick photos. Certified 13-pluses that didn’t end up in the ShareLunker program were landed from Lady Bird Lake, Toledo Bend, Fork and Alan Henry, and tales circulated of several others from a half-dozen lakes.
Some of those fish might not have been offered to ShareLunker because of a small but strident group of anglers who oppose the program, accusing it of either mishandling donated fish and causing their deaths or using fingerlings produced by ShareLunker fish to stock private waters. Neither claim holds water.
Of the 111 monster largemouths anglers have donated to the ShareLunker program over the past eight seasons, 16 have died after being transferred to the Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center in Athens. That is a mortality rate of about 13.5 percent, far from the wholesale mortality some claim and an admirable survival rate considering the fragility of the huge female fish.
Also, while some fingerlings produced by ShareLunker entries are stocked in a couple of private waters that have agreements with TPWD, allowing the state to use the lakes for research impossible to pursue in hatchery ponds or public waters, the huge majority of fingerlings are stocked into public waters. Most of them are stocked into the lake from which their parent was caught. Plus, those ShareLunker fish themselves are returned to the angler who caught them and invariably released into the water from which they were caught. (Acouple of ShareLunker entries have been caught more than once.)
Texas inland fisheries officials said this year’s record low number of entries in the ShareLunker program is a bit of a disappointment but not something worthy of major concern.
“Texas has one of the best trophy-bass fisheries in the country. That hasn’t changed,” Craig Bonds, director of inland fisheries, said recently when asked about the low number of ShareLunker entries. “This may be just a ‘blip.’ ”
It could be. It has happened before. The year after the 2000-01 ShareLunker season produced a then-record-low five entries, the 2001-02 season saw 16 entries. Acouple of years later, it was up to 24, and a whopping 32 were caught and donated during the 2005-06 season.
Texas’ offshore anglers can’t expect such a dramatic turnaround in the length of the recreational red-snapper season. Despite National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s fisheries division officials approving an increase in the annual recreational catch limit of red snapper to 7.19 million pounds, the highest since annual quotas were first imposed in 1997, the agency set the season for anglers fishing from private boats to run only nine days, opening at 12:01 a.m. June 1 and closing at 12:01 a.m. June 10. That period includes a single weekend. Offshore differences
Anglers paying to fish aboard charter boats or other for-hire vessels holding a federal permit allowing them to take customers fishing for snapper and other reef fish in waters under federal jurisdiction will see a 46-day season, opening June 1 and ending at 12:01 a.m. July 17.
The daily bag limit of snapper remains two per day with a 16-inch minimum length requirement.
This is the second year private anglers and those aboard for-hire vessels will see different season lengths — a function of a federal rule that divides the recreational catch limit between the two sectors of the recreational fishery. Under this “sector separation,” anglers fishing from private boats are allocated 57.7 percent of the annual recreational catch limit while those fishing from the approximately 1,250 federally permitted charter/for-hire vessels are allocated the remaining 42.3 percent. The length of the season for each sector is set by how long federal officials figure, using estimates of fishing pressure and average weight of snapper retained by anglers, it will take each group to land their annual allowance of snapper.
The federal rules governing harvest of red snapper in the Gulf are designed to rebuild a snapper population that fell to record lows in the 1980s and early ’ 90s. The Gulf snapper population has rebounded to a level similar to that seen in the 1970s, but it remains significantly below the target level. Federal fishing regulation are designed to rebuild the snapper population to that target level by 2032.
If current management plans continue unchanged, private-boat recreational anglers fishing for red snapper in Gulf of Mexico waters under federal jurisdiction can expect to see brief seasons for years to come. Under current rules used to determine season length, if the red-snapper population grew large enough to triple the current annual catch limit, the recreational snapper season for private-boat anglers would run less than a month.