Remember I've been away from fresh water since the early 80's.

Bought a boat last year to continue fish saltwater and took the boat to Lake Somerville to break the engine in and took a couple rods to troll with while there. My wife got hooked on catching White Bass so my bay boat became my Hybrid/White Bass machine.

Ok...well Lake Somerville isn't the water body that my pending record was caught in. It's Yegua Creek below the Somerville dam.

All summer I was wanting to figure out how to catch Hybrids, especially after catching my personal best the first couple trips to Somerville.

Back in the day I always wanted to fish the tail race below the dam at Somerville. My dad and I used to fish below Livingston dam back in the late 70's. So I hit it the last week of January of this year. After being skunked on my first trip I got the hang of tail race Hybrids. It was so easy I only kept Hybrids that were 20" or better.

Ok I bet your thinking I caught a huge Hybrid...nope!

I caught a big Striper! The week before I did catch a very nice Hybrid that made me check the TP&W web site, but found I was a couple pounds short of the 12+lb record. It was a great fish (26" 9lbs)compared to what was being caught there.

I noticed there was no listing for Striped Bass. It was crazy shortly after I catch a fish that looks a lot like a Strper. Even my fishing buddy made the comment it looked like a Striper. So I contacted TP&W in College Station. I sent them a picture and they said it looks like one but they have never been stocked in the area so it was most likely a narrow bodied Hybrid. But they did want to do DNA testing.

That was the end of February...well I get an email two weeks ago that after two rounds of testing to double check the results. I had indeed caught a Striped Bass where none have been known to be.

Best guess is washed down the Brazos River from Lake Whitney. As the crow flys that's 122 miles! 117 miles if it came up the Brazos from the coast.

Any way last week we got all the paper work, pictures and weight done!

So I guess you can call it a pending water body record... 9.4lbs a bit over 26"...not a monster as far as Stripers go...but it will go in the book!

Congrats on a great fish and record!

Congrats on the pending record for your Yegua striper. In the 80's a guest on my boat caught a striper on the main lake at Somerville. The Parks and Wildlife input back then was that some fry get mixed/missed at the hatcheries in holding ponds, or in transport trailers when they are going from lake to lake and stocking the fish. Somerville had never been stocked with stripers so it is a rare catch.

Neat post and congratulations on your pending record!

I actually ask Chris (I think that was his name) if it was possible the Strper fry might have been left behind while the reared a hatch of Hybrids. He said they don't rear them in the same location so there was no way it could have been left in the pond.

I also ask him if they keep records on the DNA of their bread stock. He said I needed to talk to Niki in College Station.

Thanks guys! I was not even sure if it was worth mentioning.

Back in the day they might have raised them in the same ponds...forgot to add this little disclaimer. ..

" It aint bragging if you can do it" - Dizzy Dean

They swim up from the Brazos. It happens after almost every big flood. I've caught one and seen 3 more caught by other people while I was fishing down there. I was told that after the big flood in 1994 they were catching a bunch of really big ones.

Great fish and congrats on the record

Congrats on your record catch.

Great catch. I had a friend who had a striper mounted that was caught in the Leon River below the dam on Lake Belton. There have never been any stripers in Belton and it was a fish that ran up from the Brazos after escaping Lake Whitney. I suspect your fish followed the same path.

Awesome, congrats on the unicorn.

Nice catch and cool story.

They can do some amazing stuff and go some crazy distances. I know a kid that caught one on the Port A jetty back in 2016. Pretty wild. Congrats on the record.

Sweet!!

Great story!
Congrats!