swimbaitrookie

You have a purist mentality - that's cool. But I'm betting you'd still be stoked as hell if you caught a 15'er out of that pond!

I think his best on fork was 12+. The pay to play lake isn't a gimme by any means. Lots of guys pay a lot of money for the chance but the stars still need to align.

A good friend of mine, one of the premier guides on Lake Fork back in the heyday, caught a 15+ from a small, trophy bass managed pay-to-play lake; the equivalent of a high-fence game ranch. I asked him if he'd have a better sense of accomplishment if he'd caught it out of Lake Fork - his reply was "dude, I caught a 15lb bass! I don't care where it came from!!" Trophy bass are hard to catch - period. So why not grow more of them!

Here's the TPWD page for the fisheries management reports. https://tpwd.texas.gov/publications/pwdpubs/lake_survey/pwd_rp_t3200_1293/#download Since moving to AZ I've been able to find their reports so I'd expect all F&G departments have similar reports since they're funded by the Sport Fish Restoration act.

The OP's concerns about saturating the gene pool are unrealistic. Here's an excerpt from the 2021 Fisheries Management report for Lake Fork prepared by TPWD. Studying the entire report is highly recommended if you really want to understand the dynamics of the fishery, but to address the "gene pool" issue the stocking history and genetics analysis should answer that. Even though the lake has been stocked with Florida strain bass for decades, the gene pool is dominated by first and second generation hybrids of Fla and northern LMB. I believe there is another report that lists the number of recent SL bass caught that have the genetics of previous SL's and I recall that percentage to be extremely low as well. The reports of other Texas lakes such as the hot one, OH Ivie, show similar results.