What's Happened to the Really Big Bass

I read a FB post about the top 25 biggest bass caught. This list has not changed since 2009 with Kurita's catch, and the last US fish on the list is 2006. So I looked at the Texas top 25 & we haven't had a change since 2011. Prior to those dates, the list was fairly fluid with additions. It's like someone thew a switch. So the lack of 16 pound plus fish is not just in Texas.

Our technology & equipment have improved 10 fold. I have no theory as to why, but would love to hear others thoughts.

There's definitely a lot more pressure these days. We also had a really bad drought from 2010 - 2015 and many lakes were under 50% full. Also it seems TPWD is hell bent on removing hydrilla and other aquatic vegetation from many of the lakes in Texas. I know Lake Austin, one of the best bass fishing lakes in Texas, was ruined by grass carp. I'm sure there's been many others.

With many of the lakes full now, I suspect the fishing is going to be great for the next couple of years with all the new structure that grew. I was out on Travis fishing today and It's amazing how much underwater structure there is now and the fish are clinging to it.

This topic came up before and I tend to agree with the theory that people don't keep enough small fish. I know it feels wrong to keep a bass heck I always say it's like eating a hunting dog or something lol. The proof is in the pudding though back in the day people kept lots of fish which allowed for large fish to become giant fish. Look at marine creek there are a ton of shall we say coke bottle fisherman that keep everything they catch out there and you see what it has produced this year. The best ranch pond I have ever fished always had a rule if it was under 16 inches you threw it in the other pond a few steps away. After years of this practice you would catch much larger fish much more consistently. Makes the most sense to me I mean look at how great our technology is and how much more realistic baits look. Tournament weights have gone up too but you hardly ever see a 15 plus pound fish caught anymore. That is my opinion.

I would guess the drought has something to do with it, Also, I may be way of base but, could it be that the folks catching those giant type bass are just not speaking up in an attempt to protect "their" water? I have never had the opportunity to be out in the situation but I'm. It sure with the rapid spread of information on social media now days that I would put information about that caliber of bass out if I were to catch one. I mean as it is now if a couple of people post about good days on lakes around me then droves of people will be there within the week. I may be way off base with this one, just a thought I had.

12.24 caught at Hubbard creek last week end.

I believe the advanced technology has hurt us more than anything. If a guy does his homework with his maps, gps, and social media tips to find the most productive looking spots before a trip, you can bet when he gets there he'll find boats on most of the places he planned to fish. That brings it to the pressure. A lot of those big fish have been hooked several times before they get big and even a dumb fish can be somewhat educated. The ones that haven't been caught may never bite a artificial bait.
Back 30 - 40 years ago a guy could go out with 4 rods and one box of baits and catch more and better fish by just hitting a bank and start fishing. A lot more of those fish went in the frying pan too. There wasn't that much habitat manipulation, scientific genetic tests or a huge tournament following either.
Nature and the environment can only take so much use before its quality goes down. I still believe there are as many 15+ pounders as ever out there somewhere though.

I would also agree with the pressure we have today , back 30-40 years ago you had less people fishing and less tackle to choose from than today, every time I go to the tackle shop I see more and more of the new and improved lures, the big fish are still here but I think they are confused, do I bite that or run from it, just like the state record was caught by a crappie fisherman on a minnow. Maybe it's more like deer hunting, right place at the right time. Don't give up they're still around just keep trying.

I blame it on lack of Hydrilla now. When Fork was cranking out the big ones it was full of Hydrilla. I fish Ray Hubbard a lot and when it was cranking out lake records on dang near a weekly basis it was during the Hydrilla boom we had for several years. Hubbard even yielded two SAL's during that period of time. Now days Hubbard has maybe 1% of the Hydrilla it use to have. I haven't been on Fork in years but last time I was there the Hydrilla was almost non existant there as well. I know a lot of other lakes are the same way.

I concur with the hydrilla theory. Habitat grows big fish. Hydrilla is the best habitat IMO. It also makes the fish feel more at ease and these hydrilla beds are nurseries for aquatic life.. It's like having protein filled feeders and planted food plots for deer. Feed 'em more of the good stuff and make it plentiful and give 'em a good place to hide and they grow big.

Fishing pressure and improved technology is a factor but not to the extent having a lake with 25%-30% of its acreage covered with hydrilla or not covered.

I remember back in the 90's when Rayburn was MORE of a fish factory than now we would run on plane thru a hydrilla flat (especially on Needmore) and give it 15-20 minutes and go fish the track cut thru the hydrilla and the fish would be there. My theory was the prop wash/disturbance knocked all these invertebrates off the grass and also displaced smaller fish and the predators would move in. This just illustrates how much life the grass supported.

I want to say this too. The disappearance of grass coincided with the outbreak of LMBV ... draw your own conclusions.

Lakes like Caddo surprise everyone and crank out a complete surprise like the 15 pounder last week. I remember years ago when it surprised everyone with a 16 pounder. Heck, even Possum Kingdom cranked out a freak 16 pounder. They can definatly surprise everyone and show up out of seemingly nowhere. Got to agree however that Fork is on the decline for really big bass. Good news: lakes go through cycles. With the really high water during the spawn last year who knows? Few years from now might be glory years again like Falcon experienced after their sudden rise in the lake levels 5-6 years ago. Maybe.......

Too many tournaments . My 16.12 lb. was caught in 2002 . After fishing Fork
for many years I finally quit going because of the crowds and PITA tournament
fishermen.

You should deal with Rayburn. At least Fork doesn't have the 5 fish limits of prime fish ... only overs and unders which keeps many T's away.

I agree with a lot of what I've read above. I'd also throw in the Internet, because every hot lake in Texas gets covered up with boats. Social Media has also played a part. Everyone wants to show off a big fish or a big sack which often comes at th expense of poor fish care. Hold your breath when you catch a big fish, if
you need to take a breath the fish needs to get dunked. If you want to drive your fish around all day to take a picture of your big sack, use a live well additive and have some flip clips handy.

I also agree with all above.
Who knows, maybe things will turn around for the better.
Somebody somewhere may catch a record this spring, but odds seem less these days.

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?

TPWD has stated Hydrilla is evasive, and they also have salvania issues on most lakes. But they are also actively helping plant native vegetation in many lakes. They are trying to find a middle point with all parties that use the lake. And I doubt that makes anyone happy.

No new lakes. I read once that bass production on a reservoir peaks at between 8 and 14 years old.
Lots of habitat like timber begins to rot, exposing forage fish to predator fish. Habitat decline = less and smaller fish.
Hydrilla helps but as stated before, TPWD, the Army Corps., landowners, whoever, fight against it.


Productive lakes far from these major cities seem to fare a little better. Or smaller lakes that get a little overlooked and the locals keep their mouths shut.
Better equipment (by far) than ever. A fish can only hide in so many places and he must eat.
More fishermen. Less fish. Less habitat.

But lakes do cycle in and out. There will always be fish being caught. Even a few big ones.

If you want to see how Vegetation changes a lake. Look at Nocona a few years back before they killed the moss. It was an amazing lake.

Rayburn is an old lake and putting out numbers as good as it ever has in this age of pressure and tournaments. It's a benefactor of high water and now stable conditions allowing the hydrilla to go crazy. Every lake is at the mercy of climate. Water levels can create a "new" fishery

You could place vegetation so native that it was in Texas waters before the dinosaurs arrived in lakes and homeowners would still hate and petition/try to kill it. I pulled into a cove on Jacksonville years ago and a 90-something year old woman was out on her dock complaining about how the city needed to kill the hydrilla because it messed up swimming. I couldn't help but wonder when the last time was that she did a little swan dive off her dock for a dip.

nm

Its absolutely a misnomer that bass need and/or eat aquatic weeds to live and grow. Aquatic growth can be either beneficial or extremely detrimental to a place with bass in it. Heavy weed growth means no oxygen at night. It also means the unavailability of forage fish. While aquatic growth can and does provide cover and habitat in some cases, in others it will stunt the growth and/or outright kill the bass around it. Basically, a strong weed line provides an easy place to find bass, but does not equate to good growth or superior habitat. Most of the food web in a lake involves planktonic life and the weeds actually do little to contribute to overall productivity and may be consuming the nutrients necessary to produce forage fish and other foods for predatory fishes like bass.

Aquatic weeds doe not equal good bass lake in every case.

Welp. Now it's going to get good.

That must be why lakes like Rayburn, Nacogdoches, Conroe before the grass was killed, Martin Creek before the grass was killed, Tyler before the grass was killed, Jacksonville before the grass was killed, and Fork before the hydrilla disappeared in the late 90s fished so poorly. The vegetation was smothering all the fish to death at night.

Lake Fork is pretty simple........after the hydrilla went bye bye, and LMV virus after that, the lake lost ALOT of big fish. But lakes and fish in them adapt. Fork still pushes some big fish out. But not like before in the hay day before the 2 things I mentioned above.

He said 'EVERY CASE'. I do believe the lack of grass, meaning no vegetation left at all, killed Lake Austin but also, I have a quarter acre pond with a 9 pounder in it, caught her twice. There is no hydrilla or vegetation (yet). Just rock and brush.

I just moved here and I do believe she is aw natural.

I can see both sides of the argument but do believe vegetation is better than none at all.

I have a friend that lives on Rayburn, he used to be an avid bass fisherman, but now only runs trot lines. A few years ago I stayed with him for about a week to help him run his lines after he got injured, one of them had a bass that was probably 12+, he said he catches several a year over 10. The line that had the bass was in 40 feet of water and about 1/4 mile from shore. The baits (live perch) were probably 10' under the surface. So it seems like at least some really big bass spend a lot of their lives suspended in 30+ feet of water and probably never see a bait. Big fish are smart and react to pressure, so it does not surprise me that so many are caught suspended in open water on trot lines.

Not many people are willing to fish all day throwing a big swimbait for one or two bites, so that probably has a lot to do with it as well.

100% agree with this. When I first fished Fork in 1986 you could find hydrilla in 18-20 ft. of water but also back then there were a 1/3 of people chasing them as there are today and probably only 2-3 tournaments a year. All that makes a difference in how, where, how big and how many that are caught. And here's a kicker, all you needed was a black and blue worm. My how times have changed. Still a great lake but not as much fun as yesteryear.

That sounds amazing- I wish I could have fished it back then. Still a very good lake but I agree about those factors and others as well.

I agree!

They killed the grass at Purtis Creek??? Did they not learn from other lakes how bad that can be?

Well bass fishing seems way better in lakes with grass in them from what I have experienced.

I think Purtis Creek is managed by the same TPWD district supervisor as Tyler and Jacksonville. If so, his only answer for hydrilla is to completely eradicate it whenever and wherever possible. If you had some in your kids' blow up pool he would want to spray it with Aquathol K and introduce grass carp just in case the poison didn't finish the job.

Small pond fishing is very different than a several thousand acre lake.

I caught one Saturday that was 10 or so, 6 feet down over water 22 ft. deep.
It's likely they do.

Trust me I get that.

If a lake (or pond, river, it's still water and habitat on a smaller scale) is good with vegetation, don't take it away completely. If it is good without vegetation don't add vegetation to it. Let nature do it's thing.

Also, Lake Austin is about 1,694 acres and a river.

I don't get this one. I thought Photosynthesis took green plants and changed carbon dioxide to oxygen with sun light. I know their is no sunlight at night but the plants nor fish will use all the oxygen before morning. The plants don't start using the oxygen over night they just don't make more. Water can get a lot of saturation from oxygen in a day to use for fish at night if this didn't happen all fish would die at night. The fish do use the grass to hide in at night and during the day. just my .02.

That's actually not correct. Plants absolutely consume oxygen and release CO2 as part of their respiration process at night. And if an area is absolutely covered in dense vegetation all the way to the surface, those oxygen levels can drop dramatically at night. Whether it could kill fish or not I have no idea since water receives dissolved oxygen many other ways.

In regards to the loss of the giants, I am with most others, severe drought essentially eliminated the cover on most lakes in Texas which has a domino effect on the entire eco-system including the plankton, small bait fish, larger bait fish and the predators. I'm of the opinion that over the next 5 years we are going to see an explosion of big fish due to so many of these lakes becoming "new" again with all of the flooded brush that initially provides cover before dying and providing very important nutrients to the lake itself.

I don't think anyone is advocating lakes completely covered with dense hyrilla top to bottom. If that was the case not only fishing but also navigating would be next to impossible.

Hydrilla attracts and hold bass and fishermen know to look for them there. In other words, it creates an intersection between the fish and fishermen. Without cover we spend a lot of our time outside the spawn chasing nomadic, suspended fish. If I have a choice between fishing grass beds and chasing open water fish I know where I am going to be.

not any one reason but several more than likely. Fishing pressure, loss of habitat and drought have all had to come in play. Take Fork for one example, back when it was in its heyday, there were many places so thick with woods and hydrilla that you couldnt even get a boat back into many areas. That had to protect a lot of bass so they could grow to monster levels.

That actually is correct.

Dissolved Oxygen « AQUAPLANT


aquaplant.tamu.edu/faq/dissolved-oxygen/

Oxygen dissolves into water from two sources: the atmosphere and from plants in the water. The primary source of oxygen for a pond is from microscopic algae (phytoplankton) or submerged plants. In the presence of sunlight, these produce oxygen through photosynthesis and release this oxygen into the pond water.

Drought and Fishing Pressure. plain and simple.

I think drought made some good places to hide and since the big fish lakes are almost full makes em tougher to catch.