Sharelunker program cons?

[SwingAway]

Just now, SumoNinja said:

Idk how it was before but from November to March we get trout anywhere from weekly to monthly depending on the lake/park. 500 lbs up to 3000 lbs per plant  

Nice, yea hopefully those fish come back. California could for sure do more in terms of active management for the bass fisheries. Grew up there and now whenever I'm back, the fishing and available water to fish blows me away. 

[SumoNinja]

Just now, SwingAway said:

Nice, yea hopefully those fish come back. California could for sure do more in terms of active management for the bass fisheries. Grew up there and now whenever I'm back, the fishing and available water to fish blows me away. 

The number of dds caught has for sure gone down I would say. It's not uncommon to see a dd pulled, but it's not easy. Local sticks do it every year. I'd like to know what the plants were like 10 plus years ago though. My home lake hasn't had a trout plant in like 3 yrs. Surrounding lakes still get them though 

[SwingAway]

5 minutes ago, SumoNinja said:

The number of dds caught has for sure gone down I would say. It's not uncommon to see a dd pulled, but it's not easy. Local sticks do it every year. I'd like to know what the plants were like 10 plus years ago though. My home lake hasn't had a trout plant in like 3 yrs. Surrounding lakes still get them though 

Yea, the lakes I grew up on (Nacimiento , santa margarita, and lopez) used to get large wood bundles dumped deep every year for habitat but now that has even stopped because there hasn't been any "deep" water since like 2008 until this year. Hopefully the rain sticks around for yall in coming years and that can change. I just think dfw gave up on active management once there wasn't any water

[JacksonF]

3 minutes ago, SwingAway said:

Yea, the lakes I grew up on (Nacimiento , santa margarita, and lopez) used to get large wood bundles dumped deep every year for habitat but now that has even stopped because there hasn't been any "deep" water since like 2008 until this year. Hopefully the rain sticks around for yall in coming years and that can change. I just think dfw gave up on active management once there wasn't any water

I live 10 minutes from Lopez, there’s plenty of brush and structure now lol. Hopefully they don’t let all the water out

[SwingAway]

6 minutes ago, JacksonF said:

I live 10 minutes from Lopez, there’s plenty of brush and structure now lol. Hopefully they don’t let all the water out

Nice! Yea, seems like margi has been fishing really well this year too. Hoping to make it back out soon.

[WTBassin]

Personally, I think the sharelunker program is an advertising program just as much as a breeding program. Once they go live with a new lake catching a sharelunker it gets hammered hard. Look at Ivie, I know it’s a phenomenon with sheer amount of large bass, but its been an insane fishery for a very long time. It’s just taken BM & JJ putting it out to the world creating this madness. It’s truly a mad house from December through May. It’s brought a lot of money to a very remote part of Texas though. Most original residents hate it, but the local economy loves it! On the grand scale, releasing 300,000 fingerlings on a 16,000 acre reservoir isn’t much. There’s more natural breeding by a long long shot on an annual basis. Just my two cents! 

[SwingAway]

8 hours ago, swimbaitrookie said:

Trophy bass are hard to catch - period.  So why not grow more of them!

So did he ever catch a 15 pounder on lake fork? In other words, were trophy fish just as hard to catch in that little pay to play pond as they were in "the real deal"?

My dad used to take me to catch trout at a hatchery when I was a toddler, caught plenty of pb's back then too!

Edited June 10, 2023 by SwingAway

[CG_Fishes]

13 hours ago, swimbaitrookie said:

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!

Depends on your perspective with all of it. I couldn't sleep at night calling that catch as legitimate as some guy who got a fish of the same caliber out of a natural system. This comparison itself though does miss much of my original point in that Lake Fork is a reservoir and not a natural system. There will never be the connection to nature that I hunt for in that system. Sure it's fun to go out and catch a bunch of big fish, but the type of fishing that really get's me going is getting lost in the woods hiking into a pond or creek where you will never see another soul. I know not many feel the same, but it is irreplaceable 

[CG_Fishes]

13 hours ago, swimbaitrookie said:

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!

Depends on your perspective with all of it. I couldn't sleep at night calling that catch as legitimate as some guy who got a fish of the same caliber out of a natural system. This comparison itself though does miss much of my original point in that Lake Fork is a reservoir and not a natural system. There will never be the connection to nature that I hunt for in that system. Sure it's fun to go out and catch a bunch of big fish, but the type of fishing that really get's me going is getting lost in the woods hiking into a pond or creek where you will never see another soul. I know not many feel the same, but it is irreplaceable 

[swimbaitrookie]

5 hours ago, SwingAway said:

So did he ever catch a 15 pounder on lake fork? In other words, were trophy fish just as hard to catch in that little pay to play pond as they were in "the real deal"?

My dad used to take me to catch trout at a hatchery when I was a toddler, caught plenty of pb's back then too!

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.

[swimbaitrookie]

27 minutes ago, CG_Fishes said:

Depends on your perspective with all of it. I couldn't sleep at night calling that catch as legitimate as some guy who got a fish of the same caliber out of a natural system. 

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!

[Amistoad]

Plenty of these fish are eating jigs, crankbaits, worms, and other baits. So the A-rig, Swimbait angle is incorrect. I’ve thought about the program and all I can say is that after all these 40 something years, I’m not convinced it’s doing wonders for the fisheries. The fish get big because of environmental conditions and some genetics, but keeping a handful of fish to spawn out of the thousands or millions of big monsters that spawn naturally doesn’t work out mathematically I’d say. 
With that, I wouldn’t participate and I’ve caught a couple that would qualify. I don’t want to bring attention to the water, or how I caught it, or cause stress and potentially death to the fish. I know I caught it. The fish knows. My wife knows. That’s good enough for me. 

[Morgan Y]

Having fished for pure floridas, pure northerns, and hybrids (or at least the odds of them being hybrids are high) here in California I can confidently say that different strains of bass have different personalities, and different fish even within a lake or water system live and eat in different places and ways. Now considering that many of the share lunker fish come from eating a rigs and what not offshore it doesn’t mean that all of their offspring will be like that, and to be fair the likelihood of a lot of those offspring having different traits from their parents that were underlying or mutated which are different from their parents makeup that made them more inclined to live offshore in a given environment show up is quite high considering the amount of offspring that bass have from a single spawn which means that sure a decent majority of the fish might be oriented towards offshore life in old age but not all of them will follow that. Bass are highly adaptable and it seems as though some orient towards different depths, forage sources, and speeds of eating based on what the conditions are and even change from year to year and season to season, but they certainly show signs of preference. There are fish that only live in heavy grass and eat craws, gills, and maybe the odd trout, there are fish that swim over 300 foot of water and eat trout and Kokanee, there are fish that sit in one tree for their entire life on one point as long as the water level is right, then there are fish that only eat Shad and follow them wherever. What I’m getting at is that there are patterns that certain groups of fish follow for nearly their whole lives. Not to mention the fact that northerns tend to be more nomadic and less structure oriented, swipe at baits more, and run for the fences once they’ve eaten compared to floridas which seem to be more territorial, slower to bite, more likely to sit around after eating a bait, and more likely to eat bigger baits on the whole. All of this is combined theory from what I’ve heard and personal experience but that’s my long 2 cents lol. 

[Archtx9]

I know about 6 guys that caught SALs on Lake Austin (my home lake).

But the lake was absolutely ruined by the same state agency that runs SAL.

They bent the knee to the Real Estate PACs and approved the stocking of 55 grass carp per vegetated acre of the lake (fish paid for my private interests).....11X the recommended limit recommended in a white paper by their own PhD fisheries biologist.

I know guys that have caught fish on Austin, that refuse to give TPWD any free pub for a 13lb fish, so it's released.

I caught a 12-12oz fish a couple months ago.....my first attempt on the scale was between 13 and 14lbs......on dry land without the boat bobbing yielded just short of 13.   That fish would not have been submitted to the program.

Additionally, TPWD might put brood from your fish back in Lake Austin, but they have provided virtually zero stocking the last 10 years of any gamefish or food chain biomass.    Social media blasts don't ensure the growth of the fishery

it was 2014 (i think) that BassMaster listed Lake Austin as the #3 bass lake in the US......the following year after the carp it wasn't in the top 100...........but the individual homes and lots on the lake are worth multi millions, as there is none of that nasty grass to get sucked into a wake surf boat fat sack

[Morgan Y]

1 hour ago, Archtx9 said:

I know about 6 guys that caught SALs on Lake Austin (my home lake).

But the lake was absolutely ruined by the same state agency that runs SAL.

They bent the knee to the Real Estate PACs and approved the stocking of 55 grass carp per vegetated acre of the lake (fish paid for my private interests).....11X the recommended limit recommended in a white paper by their own PhD fisheries biologist.

I know guys that have caught fish on Austin, that refuse to give TPWD any free pub for a 13lb fish, so it's released.

I caught a 12-12oz fish a couple months ago.....my first attempt on the scale was between 13 and 14lbs......on dry land without the boat bobbing yielded just short of 13.   That fish would not have been submitted to the program.

Additionally, TPWD might put brood from your fish back in Lake Austin, but they have provided virtually zero stocking the last 10 years of any gamefish or food chain biomass.    Social media blasts don't ensure the growth of the fishery

it was 2014 (i think) that BassMaster listed Lake Austin as the #3 bass lake in the US......the following year after the carp it wasn't in the top 100...........but the individual homes and lots on the lake are worth multi millions, as there is none of that nasty grass to get sucked into a wake surf boat fat sack

Sounds like typical management. It’s honestly enraging.