Largemouth Bass Lunkers

The 76-year old Largemouth world record is one of the most coveted records on the books. George W. Perry of Telfair County, Georgia caught the fish on June 2, 1932 and has been challenged, but never toppled in that time. However, little Dixon Lake in Southern California has produced a fish that broke the record, but the catch was not in compliance with the International Game Fish Association's regulations. Mac Weakly caught the 25.1-pound "Dottie" in 2006 but the IGFA failed to recognize the record because she was not weighed on a certified scale and because she was 'foul' hooked. Where will the next world record largemouth bass come from? To find the answer, we went to a man that knows a little something about lunker largemouth, Texas angler extraordinaire and BASS pro, Mark Davis.

Without the slightest hesitation, "Lake Fork," Davis says. "The success of a bass reaching true lunker proportions depends on the food sources available, water quality, and the most important component, genetics."

It takes a global village to build a really big fish and nowhere else is that more apparent than Texas. The first Florida-strain Largemouth were brought to Texas in 1971. The fish were delivered to stock the new reservoirs constructed in Texas to provide the growing population's drinking water needs. The following year the first hatchery bred Floridians were introduced into Texas waters.

Over the next decade, California and Floridian genetic strains bolstered the size of the Texas lunkers. Then in 1986, Joe Bob Wells, in a daring fish smuggling operation, flew to Cuba and returned with Cuban bass that he smuggled into Texas through Mexico. Since the ShareLunker program was introduced, the Texas state record has been broken twice, the first time breaking a 43-year-old record of 13.5 pounds with a 14.1-pound fish, which was quickly bested in 1992 with a whopping 18.18-pound leviathan.

Lake Fork already has the ready-made food sources and excellent water quality. However, where Mother Nature may fall short in supplying true bestial genetic mutants to the population, Texas Parks and Wildlife's Operation World Record is helping her out. Operation World Record is a part of the Budweiser Texas ShareLunker Program,which is now the Toyota Texas ShareLunker Program, a joint program between private and public funding designed to protect our nation's recreational fisheries.

ShareLunker Program director David Campbell agrees with Davis, "There is no doubt that I feel that Texas has a real good chance to break the world record weight. Just the fact of 458 ShareLunker entries from 56 different public lakes tells me that it could happen anywhere in Texas."

For it to qualify for ShareLunker status, a fish must exceed thirteen pounds. Once the fish is caught, the angler must report the catch to TPW and they send out a hatcheries team to take the fish back to the Athens Freshwater Fisheries Center for breeding with other ShareLunkers to spawn the next potential world record.

Campbell adds, "As part of TPWD's Operation World Record, TPW stocks ShareLunker offspring into six research lakes and tracks the growth of those fish as compared to wild fish. Results of the study will not be available for several years, but preliminary indications are that the ShareLunker offspring do grow faster."

The science behind the ShareLunker literally delves into the genetic superiority of these fish. TPW uses genetic markers known as microsatellites to track the offspring of ShareLunkers in the wild but also to track their parentage. These genetic markers allow TPW biologists to track the survival and fecundity of the hatchery-spawned fish.

Davis continues, "the cross breeding of genetically superior, large females with genetically superior males only means great things for Texas bass. The genetically superior species definitely places Texas in the conversation with Florida and California as a producer of the next world record."

Campbell adds, "The most telling statistic is that the 13-pound minimum required to qualify for the ShareLunker Program is bigger than the state records of 28 other states. If you want to catch a big bass, Texas is the place to do it, and so far 56 reservoirs have produced 13-pounders."