Outdoors With Mat Taylor
Kempner angler hooks, releases near-record lunker bass

Former Soil Conservation Service employee and longtime writer Mat Taylor offers his outdoors column for Dispatch Record readers. He can be contacted at (254) 518-2262 or via email at mntaylor@agristar.net.

Spring is the spawning season for largemouth bass, and it is an excellent time to be on the water searching for a big bass.

My next-door neighbor Frankie Fowler, who lives east of Kempner, recently caught a huge bass on Lake Belton. He was with his guide and fishing buddy Darrel Agnew.

Fowler was fishing in about 12 feet of water with a five-inch watermelon-red Yum Dinger worm when he hooked the big fish.

After a struggle he landed the lunker bass. The fish weighed 12 pounds six ounces, was 28 inches long and had a girth of 20 inches.

After weighing, measuring and photographing the fish, it was released back into the lake. Fowler plans to have a replica mount made by a taxidermist.

The largemouth just missed tying the lake record of 13.0 pounds.

Lake Belton -- unlike Lake Fork, Amistad and Falcon -- does not have a reputation for producing many lunker bass. Fowler, however, proved that trophy largemouth can be found in Belton and other Central Texas lakes. If the fish had been caught before spawning, it probably would have weighed more than 13 pounds.

Frankie Fowler, left, caught this 12-pound, six-ounce largemouth in Lake Belton, fishing with guide Darrel Agnew. Fowler caught the near-record lunker bass on a Yum Dinger plastic worm.

Naturally, Fowler was excited after landing the fish. "I thank the Lord for allowing me to catch the bass of a lifetime," he said. "I released the fish and, hopefully, some other angler will have the opportunity to catch her again, and maybe she will be a new lake record at that time."

The fish was also just short of qualifying for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Sharelunker program in which bass 13 pounds or larger are donated to the Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center at Athens.

The TFFC is headquarters for the Sharelunker program, which encourages anglers who have caught 13-pound-plus largemouth bass to lend or donate the fish to TPWD for research and spawning purposes.

Entries are accepted from Oct. 1 through April 30. Through the program, thousands of largemouth bass fingerlings from the lunker bass have been stocked in lakes across Texas.

The 2007-08 program has just been completed, and there were 13 bass entries. This is a small percentage of the many thousands caught by anglers each year.

Of the 13 entries, three came from Lake Fork. Lake Fork historically has produced more trophy bass than any lake in Texas and maybe the U.S. Two bass came from Falcon Lake. Single entries were from Lakes Conroe, Toledo Bend, Waco, Amistad, Richland-Chambers, Sam Rayburn, Casa Blanca and Tyler State Park.

The largest bass entered weighed 14.5 pounds and came from Tyler State Park. The second-largest was 14.25 and was caught in Falcon Lake. The thirdlargest came from Lake Waco and weighed 13.87.

I did some research and of the 13 sharelunker bass, five were caught on plastic worms and two on other plastic baits. One struck a Rat-L-Trap lure, two hit spinner baits, and another was caught on a water dog and rainbow trout swim bait.

Although you need a boat to improve the odds of catching a trophy bass, that is not always the case. Professional fisherman Scott Campbell of Springfield, Mo. caught one bass entered in the Sharelunker program. He was fishing in a tournament, but he wasn't in his boat. He was casually casting a plastic worm from a boat dock when he hung the 13.13- pounder.

Another fisherman -- Pamela Plummer of Fort Worth -- also was fishing off a dock on Lake Fork when she caught a 13.11- pound bass on a red plastic worm. Sometimes it is better to be lucky than good.

So, if the wind is not blowing too hard, now is the time to head to your favorite lake and try to hook a bass. Fowler said he would go back to Belton Lake soon to try to catch another large bass.

Speaking of the Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center, if you are near Athens and have never visited the center, you should make an effort to go. I went several years ago and enjoyed it very much.

The center covers 106 acres with a 23,000-square-foot visitor center. Inside the center is a 300,000-gallon aquarium that houses many species of freshwater fish found in the state. The Texas Fishing Hall of Fame is located at the TFFC, and there a 24,000- square-foot indoor fish hatchery and research laboratory at the site.

Also on the TFFC grounds are a 1.2-acre public fishing pond and a 0.8-mile wetlands trail. More than 160 species of plants, shrubs, trees and flowers are displayed.