What baits have you heard of that caught an official 13+ ShareLunker with? I know Ethel who was ShareLunker #1 was caught off an Orginal Stanley Jig and a Hale Craw.

Go to tpwd website and you can look this up for yourself. They will even tell you what moon phase it was when the true share lunker was caught.

live minnow on a crappie pole !

Just about every bait made. Too many to list. You can go to TPWD and search thru every fish recorded and it tells what they were caught on.

https://tpwd.texas.gov/spdest/visitorcenters/tffc/sharelunker/

Jig

Which leads to another question (the elephant in the room): where have they all gone? Nobody seems to be talking about the steep decline in texas big bass.

[quote=johntvette]Which leads to another question (the elephant in the room): where have they all gone? Nobody seems to be talking about the steep decline in texas big bass. [/quote

Probably the single biggest factor is the drought we had. Not sure of the second biggest reason. My guess would be tournament mortality.

Yeah their website only gives out some information not much after the last couple of years.

Yeah their website only gives out some information not much after the last couple of years.

Crappie jigs have done some work on them

I�m curious to see the statistic of how many of the fish were caught sight fishing compared to just fishing.
I�m guessing that the Jig/crankbait dominate the numbers.
Biggest fish in my boat have come off of multiple presentations. Swimbait, Dropshot, Tx Rig, Shakey head

Here is a link to my post last year on some sharelunker data. I�ve been thinking about re-running the data for this year.

Sharelunker Analytics

In the 90's, there were like 30 of these things caught every year. Now, we're lucky if there is six.

Also, look at the top 50 bass caught in Texas. Not many are from this century. This struck me as odd, considering the advancements in equipment. Where have the lunkers gone?

They've gone the way of lakes maturing and being less fertile, pure Florida and F1 genes being watered down with age, loss of habitat due to invasive aquatics control and natural loss of cover (and silting) as lakes age. Droughts come and go, but the most recent was severe and prolonged. That lack of water certainly had an impact, too.

The watering down of the Florida strain was something I suspected. Not that I've been in danger of catching any top 50.