Has Tpwd watered down the term Share lunker . Seems like that was a term for fish over 13 lbs and now just a good fish is called that.

what's a lunker?

8# and over works for me, DD is just that much better.

I think the way it is now will help fisheries if people just send the scales in. if you kept it at only 13+ you don't end up with the data that allowing 8# and up will give. I think it will help with stockings etc. over the long run. jmo

Lunkers are in the eyes of the beholder....

Everybody knows a true sharelunker is 13lbs+. That said, ShareLunker is just the name of a program designed to help to improve the states fisheries. Adding "classes" to that program has nothing to do with everyone getting a participation trophy. It has to do with the state being super interested in as much data as they can get their hands on in regards to big fish. Hence they've made a couple different classes to encourage people to flood them with data. It's a business exchange. You take 3 minutes and give them some details on a fish over 8lbs, and they will send you a shoe box package with about 15 bucks worth of fishing related items in it. Win/Win.

So stop complaining it's a participation trophy or watering down of the terms. It's the state trying to make our fisheries better with a few different classes of fish to get more data. Lunker (8lbs +), Elite (10lbs +), Legend (13lbs +). Oh by the way, if you don't want to help the fisheries in the state get better, you don't have to participate!

Well said

I noticed a certain individual posting he’d caught his fourth ShareLunker for the year just a couple months after the new format started. This left many with feeling that the term had definitely been watered down for some. An 8 pounder is still an 8 but submitting it along with the catch data can be valuable to TPWD. To us old school Sharelunker hunters it’s always going to be a 13+ that gets our attention.

I’m old school and caught my first real Sharelunker February 28 2017. A true Sharelunker would still have to be over 13 lbs and donated during the spawning window of the program. The Lunker has to spawn and share some of her fry to truly qualify for this title to me. However I am a open minded person just enough to realize that collecting catch data on bass 8 lbs and larger will help TPWD in their research. I know I’d love to have access to the data they’ve collected since the new era started.

If you catch a sub 13 pounder, you aren’t sharing anything except maybe your photo on social media. Did we water down the term? Absolutely.

That's not true. You are sharing information about where, when, and on what the fish was caught. Furthermore, they also ask they you send in scale samples. All this information combined makes an incredibly powerful data set to know which lakes are producing the largest fish and whether or not those large fish have ShareLunker DNA. In addition to all the really cool things we can learn about big bass behavior, we will also ultimately learn whether the ShareLunker program is truly spreading the superior genetics we all hope it is.

Everybody knows a true sharelunker is 13lbs+. That said, ShareLunker is just the name of a program designed to help to improve the states fisheries. Adding "classes" to that program has nothing to do with everyone getting a participation trophy. It has to do with the state being super interested in as much data as they can get their hands on in regards to big fish. Hence they've made a couple different classes to encourage people to flood them with data. It's a business exchange. You take 3 minutes and give them some details on a fish over 8lbs, and they will send you a shoe box package with about 15 bucks worth of fishing related items in it. Win/Win.

So stop complaining it's a participation trophy or watering down of the terms. It's the state trying to make our fisheries better with a few different classes of fish to get more data. Lunker (8lbs +), Elite (10lbs +), Legend (13lbs +). Oh by the way, if you don't want to help the fisheries in the state get better, you don't have to participate!