She's probably out there right now eating the crappie at one of my brushpiles.

Is it possible? Yes. Will it happen? I am saying no. As mentioned earlier there is a lot of difference in a 13-15 pounder and an 18 1/2 in TX. Just for the sake of argument I looked up the history of the tallest men in history. As you might imagine there were hundreds and though the list wasn't extensive you could say many hundreds over 7 feet tall. I am talking about "documented" accounts, not hearsay. You wanna guess how many were over 8 feet including the guy we've seen pictures of as a kid that was 8' 11"? Documented in history there were 19 men over 8 feet. So for the sake of argument or discussion which we are having here an 18 1/2 or 19 pound fish in TX would be a freak as is a 22 pound fish being the world record.

Some of those guys that were over 8' also didn't live a full life and they had some sort of disorder. So it may take a sick fish to break the record.

This fish is the World record Bass in my opinion, foul-hooked or not: Dottie - This fish was a true freak of nature weighing 25 pounds when Mack Weakley caught her.

Hard to argue with that, Ken.

I read something that when they found her floating she was at 19lbs. Good example of how the fluctuate.

Yes the stress of the spawn often kills the larger older fish.

She was 25.1 on 3-20-06. She was found floating dead on 5-8-08 two years later. The story goes that she had fully spawned out by the time she was found dead and weighed 19 pounds. I personally don't think she would have had six pounds of eggs in her but who knows. Many times a bass will lose weight as they near the end of their life.

They guessed her to be 15-17 years old at that point. I wonder if they took her otolith bone from her head to see exactly how old she was. I cannot find anything on the interweb thingy that says they did.

She weighed 21.68 in May of 2003. I spoke with Jed Dickerson, the guy who first caught her. She was pre-spawn then. He told me he hooked her in about 15 feet of water.

Hope it's Fork, she's tough but tourneys may kill her.

As far as world records I am not sure Texas has it. California seems to be better suited with fish like Dottie. There is bound to be another although that was one freak of a fish.

I forgot about Dottie. Good point right there.

Back a couple years ago they did an electro-shock on fork to study the fish size and populationf and brought up 30+ bass that would beat the world record

do you have a link or resource I could look at on this? i would love to learn more

I can possibly see 1 fish for something like this but 30...

I would imagine if this were the case everyone on TFF would have heard about this a long time ago. Not saying it's not true but...

Fake News