Texas Sharelunker by Year

Texas Sharelunker
Over 13LBS
Year # of fish
1999 16
2000 24
2001 2
2002 18
2003 8
2004 18
2005 24
2006 31
2007 16
2008 15
2009 18
2010 31
2011 20
2012 14
2013 12
2014 7
2015 6
2016 1
2017 5
2018 6
2019 5
Interesting to see the decline over the past 6 years. Curious as to what people think are the reasons for the decline. Cyclical? Pressure? Climate? If "cyclical" do you think we are on the verge of having another "run" where large number of fish are caught?

Drought and lakes that aren’t as fertile as they once were.

The age of our reservoirs and the decline of Fork. Fork has always kicked out a majority of those fish and for whatever reason everything I'm hearing is she's very unwell at the moment.

If my memory is right 2010 was the last time Falcon was full?

Were all Texas lakes high in 2010?

If so I would say all the new water and structure lured some of them big fish up into new areas resulting in that record year for the lunkers. But its just a guess, I only fished a few times a year until 2017.

sometimes it be like that...

Big'ens attended "how not to get caught" grad school.

My guess would be water fluctuations. Looks like low sharelunker years correlate pretty closely to years where lakes were rising and higher sharelunker numbers were reported in years with declining water levels.

Some were not reported or submitted for Sharelunker.

Probably due to the data correlation from 5pounder and Sharelunker non reporting noted by Hookem. Sharelunker shaming is real...

But isn't there a guy on here who caught about a dozen this year?

My thoughts on why the dip over the last 6 years are lakes are older, grass is being sprayed and a few dead sharelunkers had many people not turning them in.

Also with 251 sharelunker entries, how Fork goes, so goes this list. The drought from 2011 probably has a bit of an influence as well.

They just had one saturday!

The 3 big years for sharelunker were put up when the west Texas lakes had large entries. 2005-2006 Alan Henry churned out a large portion of those and in 2010 Lake Ivie was a real big contributor. Numerous factors have caused those 2 lakes to decline.

Seems to be around the same time hydrilla started disappearing from Fork. Back when we all still believed spraying didn't kill hydrilla.

Grass has been gone from Austin since 2013.

Alan Henry took a dump after the spotted bass took over, less food for the big girls.

2010-2011 were drought years.... When you have less lakes contributing entries you get what we have now. Zero Henry, Austin, Ivie, Rayburn, etc.

I think its the decline in grass over all in most lakes...

^^THIS^^

When I catch one, I'll take a pic and drop it right back in the lake!

I can believe this being a big impact on LMB size. It seems like a lot of the East Texas lakes have become overrun with spots over the last couple of years.

^^ I 2nd This.

my 2 cents, i would think the primary cause is the droughts of '10/'11.

There was a new one sunday on stillhouse at tuffman tourny

I blame Trump, the NRA and global warming.

Why you leaving out the 90's?

Cause i can't count high enough to include all the sharelunkers caught back then!
Drought in 2010-2011...but produced 2 of the most productive years in the past 20.

I think 3 things had the biggest impact on Fork especially......

1999-2000.......LMBV on Fork and Rayburn

2001-2010........loss of grass in a lot of the lakes around here.....especially Fork.

2011-2012..........massive drought

Drought then high muddy water and overarching the spraying of grass.