TEXAS
FALCON LAKE BASS FISHING GUIDE
largemouth bass
• smallmouth
bass • stripers • black
bass • blue catfish
• channel
catfish • yellow
catfish • crappie
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News Release
Media Contact: Larry Hodge, 903-676-2277, larry.hodge@tpwd.state.tx.us -
May 11, 2009
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Size Large Genes
- Florida Largemouth Bass Changed Texas Fishing Forever
- ATHENS, Texas — If shooting fish in a barrel is easy, showing why Texas bass are bigger than ever is even easier.
- While not even the editors of the
American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms can come up with an
explanation of where or how the expression "shooting fish in a barrel"
originated, even this humble writer can ascertain why bigger bass are
found in Texas today than 40 years ago.
- Three words: Florida. Largemouth.
Bass.
- But you don’t have to take my word
for it. Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) inland fisheries
geneticist Dijar Lutz-Carrillo has been using the latest technology to
analyze DNA from 147 bass weighing 13 pounds or more that have been
entered into TPWD’s ShareLunker program since 1995. (Samples were not
available from all the entries during that period.)
- First, a little background. The largemouth bass native to Texas are commonly called northern largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides salmoides), and the Texas record for this subspecies was caught in 1945. It weighed 13.5 pounds.
- Florida largemouth bass (Micropterus
salmoides floridanus) were introduced into Texas public waters in
the early 1970s by TPWD. This species is known to attain weights
greater than 20 pounds.
- Soon the Texas record began to go
up, and up and up. The current Texas state largemouth bass record
stands at 18.18 pounds and came from Lake Fork in 1992.
- In what might qualify as a classic
case of "Duh," Lutz-Carrillo found that of the 147 fish mentioned
above, 76, or 52 percent, were pure Florida largemouth bass. Another
58, or 39 percent, were crosses between Florida and northern bass in
which the Florida influence was stronger. That’s a total of 91 percent
in which the Florida bass genes dominated.
- That comes as no surprise, but it’s
scientific confirmation of what TPWD inland fisheries biologists have
been saying for years: TPWD’s fish stocking program works.
- But there were some surprises in the
data, too.
- Fish from Lake Fork, which has been
stocked only with Florida bass (no northern bass) since its
construction, produced 47 of the fish Lutz-Carrillo analyzed. Yet only
30 percent of those fish were pure Florida. Another 53 percent had
more Florida than northern genes. And four of the fish actually had
more northern than Florida genes. Where did the northern bass genes
come from? Most likely there were northern bass present in streams
feeding the lake, and nature took its course.
- Lake Alan Henry, near Lubbock, has
also been stocked exclusively with Florida largemouth. Yet not all the
23 big fish analyzed had only Florida bass genes. Either northern
largemouth somehow found their way into the lake, or some stocked fish
had both northern and Florida genes. Genetic testing of just a few
years ago was not as precise as it is today.
- Falcon International Reservoir had
four fish in the study. None of the fish in the study were pure
Florida, but Florida genes dominated in all of them.
- One thing does come through loud and
clear from the figures: Not one single fish of the 147 was a pure
northern largemouth, the native species. The impact of stocking
Florida bass on the genetic make-up of the population couldn’t be more
evident. Florida genes make bigger bass, even in Texas.
- Yet even bigger bass may be in Texas
anglers’ future. TPWD’s ShareLunker program uses 13-pound or bigger
bass donated by anglers in a selective breeding program, stocking the
resulting fingerlings into public waters. Most are stocked as 1.5-inch
fingerlings (some 78,000 in 2008), but a portion are designated as
Operation World Record (OWR) fish and are reared to six inches before
being stocked (more than 59,000 in 2008).
- The growth of the OWR fish is being monitored and compared to growth rates of wild fish by TPWD biologists. Now in its fourth year, the program collected fish from Lake Raven, a small lake in Huntsville State Park, that give a hint of what may lie ahead.
- While the average four-year-old wild
fish from Lake Raven weighed 2.23 pounds, the average OWR fish weighed
2.88 pounds. And one of those OWR fish was 23 inches long and weighed
a whopping 7.23 pounds!
- Allen Forshage, now director of the
Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center in Athens, where the ShareLunker and
OWR programs are headquartered, was one of the biologists who worked
with the Florida bass introductions. "The introduction of Florida
largemouth bass and the implementation of regulations that protect
larger fish have had a profound impact on Texas bass fishing," said
Forshage. "The ShareLunker program has documented the catch of large
fish and has provided the resources such as funding for the DNA
research and the brood fish to make fishing even better."//
© Copyright Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.