Catch and release gone mad!.....No balance, and nature can be cruel.

Maybe all of our lakes are just getting old.

Pressure, pressure, pressure. Same amount of water, twice as many anglers. As a result fewer fish reach trophy size and the ones that do wise up. Who knows how many lures they've seen by the time they hit the DD mark. Hundreds? Thousands? It adds up over time.

The drought hasn't helped in Texas or CA. In CA which is where most of the top 25 were coming from in the 90's and early 2000's they also stopped stocking florida strain bass. Northern genes are dominate so over time there has been genetic drift away from fish that grow to mammoth proportions. All the water Texas has caught the last couple years will help. As reservoirs age they become less fertile, that won't help. Lakes do cycle, but I doubt Texas lakes will ever return to glory day production. What the sate really needs is a big new reservoir stocked with florida strain genetics.

They are old Mark, over fished and have lost lots of habitat. I started fishing Fork in 1986 and the only piers you saw was at the marinas and even then very few. The banks were filled with all types of vegetation, mostly hydrilla and duck weed. Now you can hardly find a bank anywhere that isn't covered with boat docks and piers and/or boathouses. Shallow cover for bass, bream and shad is almost nonexistent. A well managed new lake would be a welcome sight with a no dock or pier restriction. A lake managed for fishing only. Probably not going to happen but doesn't hurt to wish.

Lakes with great bass genetics managed just for fishing can lose lots of habitat also--Purtis Creek

I don't think you can compare a 350 acre lake like Purtis Creek with large reservoirs like Lake Fork, Richland Chambers or Ray Roberts. And, if you look at the stocking history I wouldn't say it was that well managed. Very few threadfin shad and the largest stockings were channel catfish.

Purtis Creek is one of the best examples of mismanagement by the state(IMHO). No pressure from property owners, no pleasure boats, idle only speed, built for fishing as the PRIMARY purpose with an emphasis on trophy black bass.....and the state of Texas eradicated the grass. Agree or not you can always come up with pros and cons for grass "control" in reservoirs built for other purposes(flood control, water storage...) but Purtis is the most graphic display of "what were they thinking", ruin an asset and waste my tax dollars as I have witnessed in lake manegment by the state.

I think it's a combo of many factors

The lake i fish doesnt have florida strain. I pulled a 13 northern straight out a few yrs back and had it mounted and lost a bigger one a year later. The pressure is way up here lately,,,,just cahnge tactics and you should be fine. Im not fishing conventional gear anyways and the few days i do fish i usually hook into a monster each season. Do yhings outside the box and pay attention to your surroundings

still here, just have to adapt to the change in bass fishing. the old red shad aint what it used to be...

too many bass fisherman that only fish 3 months of the year

Hey, i only fish 2 months a yr total amd i kill em almost everytime i go. I also got calendars of the last 5 yrs of what and where i caught wich fish. Believe it or not them fish are like clock work. And big bass are not like little bass- its like a completly different species. You can read little bass habits but not so much so on a big one. I can spend an entire morning just looking at the water and decide not even throwing a bait depending on whats going on around me. Its worked so far so good

You can have the best electronics which will help locate fish and structure but they will not make the fish bite. This may have already been mentioned but my opinion is it is due to the enormous growth in the fishing industry. When I was growing up I loved to go fishing most any chance I got especially as I got into my high school years and had a little more freedom to go but most of my friends didn't fish much or not at all. Now you have several high schools and colleges with multiple teams fishing tournaments. With that being said, I think the amount of pressure is a big factor on the decline of the bigger fish being caught. The droughts of a few years ago and then the floods of recent years don't help. Also I think that a lot of fish aren't getting quite as big as they used to because very few anglers including myself keep bass. This puts an abundance of smaller more aggressive fish in the lake which can hurt the overall growth of the fish. That's not to say there aren't any big fish out there though. There are still quite a few DD fish being caught.

Inside every 12 pounder there is a 15 pounder screaming to get out.

This is absolutely true, and they have done a bang up job of accomplishing it.

With friends like TPWD looking out for us fishermen, who needs enemies?