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ATHENS, Texas — In the mid-1980s, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department envisioned a public outreach program to promote trophy bass catch and release. The radical idea at the time would reward anglers with a fiberglass replica of their catch should they agree to donate it to the state’s fish hatchery program.
The idea worked and became known as Operation Share a Lone Star ShareLunker. It began with a bang on Nov. 26, 1986, when Lake Fork guide Mark Stevenson caught Entry #1. His largemouth weighed 17.67 and became the state record.
What happened next was another radical move that has exceeded the expectations of the program. Future entries would be used for selective breeding, with the genetically superior offspring released into Texas lakes to promote bass fishing and conservation.
Today the only program like it in the nation is called Toyota ShareLunker, and it has expanded on two significant fronts. Welcome to ShareLunker 2.0. Until last year bass weighing 13 pounds or more were eligible to become ShareLunker entries. They still are and so are bass weighing 8 pounds or more or measuring 24 inches. The program also expanded from accepting entries from January through March to all year for some fish. Anyone who comes to Texas and catches a bass fitting the criteria is eligible.
“Opening the program up to eight pounders enables us to expand the database of information we can use to improve the research even more, and that ultimately benefits our stocking efforts,” said Kyle Brookshear, Toyota ShareLunker Program Coordinator. “That expanded data is valuable to our biologists, because they don’t collect as many fish in that size using conventional sampling techniques.”
Ultimately the expanded data reach will have far reaching effects that will benefit a statewide bass fishery that is second to none in the nation.
“Our biologists can expand their knowledge of genetics and improve hatchery production even more with the additional data,” added Brookshear.
For anglers that means more bass that can reach trophy size sooner than ever before. Other management practices can benefit too, such as fish handling and setting policies like slot and length limits.
The program now has four entry weight categories beginning with the Lunker Class 8+ for bass measuring the 24 inches or weighing 8 to 9.99 pounds. The next level is Lunker Elite Class 10+ for those weighing 10 to 12.99 pounds; Lunker Legend Class is for 13-plus pound bass caught year-round. Lunker Legacy Class is for 13-plus-pounders entered between Jan. 1 and March 31. Only those entries are eligible for donation to the hatchery and research program. Those months also coincide with the three-month window that is optimum for spawning ShareLunker entries at the program’s hatchery and research facility in Athens.
TPWD saw immediate positive results of the expansion last year. Anglers entered largemouth weighing 8 pounds or larger into the four categories, including six Legacy Class bass. The total number of entries in other categories who provided citizen science data included: 5 Lunker Legend bass 13 pounds or heavier caught outside the Jan.1 through March 31 spawning window or not loaned for spawning, 107 Lunker Elite bass weighing 10 to 12.99 pounds, and 368 Lunker bass at least 24 inches or weighing between 8 and 9.99 pounds.
“The anglers who loaned their ‘Legacy Class’ bass to us last year for our selective breeding program made a generous and valuable contribution towards the future of bass fishing in Texas,” said Brookshear. “In addition to stocking their offspring back into the lakes where they were caught, we are incorporating offspring from the pure Florida largemouth bass ‘Legacy Class’ ShareLunkers into our hatchery broodstock so that in coming years we can stock millions of these selectively-bred big bass offspring statewide.”
Last year, four of the Legacy Class fish spawned successfully at the Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center, and thousands of those offspring were stocked in Twin Buttes Reservoir, Sam Rayburn Reservoir, Kurth Reservoir, and Lake Fork. Because the Kurth Reservoir fish was a pure Florida largemouth bass, hatchery staff were able to retain 18,000 fingerlings for the state’s largemouth bass ShareLunker broodstock development.
All confirmed ShareLunker participants receive a Catch Kit corresponding to their fish’s weight class. Each Catch Kit includes an achievement decal, merchandise and other giveaways. All entrants are included in a grand prize drawing to win a $5,000 shopping spree from Bass Pro Shops. Lunker Legacy Class anglers are entered in an additional drawing to win a $5,000 shopping spree from Bass Pro Shops, VIP access and awards programming at the 2019 Toyota Bassmaster Texas Fest and other prizes.
The program has also expanded the process for submitting entries to make it easier and more efficient for recording information used for research and even fisheries management policies. Entries can now be submitted through the ShareLunker app available for free from the Apple App Store and Google Play, or on the website at texassharelunker.com.
Submitting an entry on the app can be done from the boat at the time of the catch. All it takes to complete the process is taking two photos of the catch—one showing the weight on a handheld digital scale and the other with the fish on a measuring board. The fish can be released, or taken to a ShareLunker weigh and holding station if within the Legacy Class.
What else anglers can do is provide a scale sample in an envelope provided by TPWD. The information will be used to run parentage analysis to identify if the fish is a previous entry, or spawned from the ShareLunker hatchery.
“Why that is imporrtant to us is it helps determine the geneology of the fish,” explained Brookshear. “We can determine if the fish came from a ShareLunker parent or if it came from our hatchery.
“We’ll share that information with the angler so they can see how directly involved they are in ensuring the success of the program,” he added.
Other important data is collected as part of the process, including time of day and date, lure and presentation, water temperature and location. All of it is invaluable to the research. Eventually, plans call for that information to be shared with anglers to help them improve their fishing success even more.