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Forum nameTrophy Fishing Forum
Topic subjectGrowing the record in Texas
Topic URLhttp://www.calfishing.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=5&topic_id=12225
12225, Growing the record in Texas
Posted by swimbait, Wed Apr-09-14 11:08 AM
Pretty good article in Bassmaster last month about a guy trying to grow the record down in South Texas.

Sowbelly covered this topic in some detail and described a few the guys who have tried. What was interesting about this attempt is the concept of using 'food plots' - meaning a series of small ponds around the main pond where forage is grown and then flushed in to the big lake.

This approximates a trout plant, and in lieu of trout these guys are using a giant freshwater shrimp that apparently has little in the way of instincts to avoid being eaten by a fish.

Another interesting aspect of the lake is that they plan to limit fishing pressure to a certain number of days per month. This could help a lot in making a potential record fish catchable. You could debate how well this work, as there are several lakes in CA that definitely grew record size fish that were never caught but at minimum it seems like a good start.

If you wanted to really, and I mean REALLY up your odds, you'd allow no fishing in the lake. Reason being that the biggest bass is also going to be the easiest to catch - all the way up until the point where it gets caught.

If it took 10 years to grow the record in this pond, odds are the biggest few fish will be caught multiple times, even with very little pressure. Nico and I fished for some fish that were over 20lbs for several years and could never get them to bite. These fish were line shy like a brown trout on Hot Creek and so aware of boats it was hard to even fish for them. It's hard to say how many times these fish had been caught but it's likely the number was greater than 5x per fish over their lifespan.

Maybe the move within in the move to making the fish catchable is to not only limit the fishing days but limit the lures. So when you know the potential record fish is in there, you then start using baits the fish have never ever seen before, which makes them that much more catchable.

Of course the alternative is just to bait a 14 inch long shrimp and get it over with. Or build the lake in a way where all the prime spawning areas are super shallow and made to have clear water by pumping in clear water at that spot.

There's no way to know for sure what the outcome will be for these guys trying to get the fish to grow, but more than any other deal I've ever read about, it seems like this could be the one to do it.
12226, RE: Growing the record in Texas
Posted by swimbait, Mon Apr-14-14 10:16 AM
Here's the article, they put it online

http://www.bassmaster.com/tips/building-world-record-bass