The Dallas Morning News Ray Sasser Column: Lunker Can Be Caught and Still Get Away
By Ray Sasser, The Dallas Morning News
Jan. 11–On Friday, Jaret Latta of Nacogdoches caught a Lake Nacogdoches largemouth bass weighing 13.31 pounds. Latta’s catch is the third Budweiser ShareLunker in what is shaping up as another very good big-bass season.
The ShareLunker program has garnered worldwide recognition for Texas Parks and Wildlife’s hatchery program. Anglers who catch bass weighing 13 pounds or more can keep the fish alive and healthy and donate them to the program. Latta’s fish is the 426th entry.
Last season produced 32 lunker entries, the third-highest total since the program began in 1986. What we don’t know is how many 13-plus-pounders are caught and never reported.
On the day that Latta tempted his Lake Nacogdoches lunker with a white jig, my friend David O’Keeffe of Abilene cast a peanut butter-and-jelly-colored jig to a drop-off on Coleman County’s Scarborough Lake. He got a bite on the first cast and set the hook on what initially felt like a two- or three-pounder.
“The fish swam around the front of the boat into wide-open water, and I felt like everything was all right,” O’Keeffe said. “Then she jumped and I saw that things were not all right. I was fishing with 12-pound line and the fish was huge.”
O’Keeffe fought the bass into submission, then realized he had another problem. His landing net had a collapsible handle that was not extended in a usable position.
“I couldn’t get the handle into position with one hand, so I had to hold my rod under my arm while I got the landing net put together,” O’Keeffe said. “I was shaking by the time I got my hands on that fish.”
O’Keeffe is a retired fishing guide who’s caught plenty of big bass. Until last week, his personal best weighed 12 pounds and was caught from Lake McCarty, another small lake near Abilene. Last February, O’Keeffe and his Abilene fishing partner, Bill Horeis, were fishing at Hubbard Creek Lake when Horeis boated a lake record that weighed 12.64 pounds.
When full, Lake Scarborough is 116 acres. It’s considerably smaller these days. O’Keeffe’s fish sagged his digital scales to 13 pounds, 12 ounces. He called the TP&W fisheries office in Abilene but nobody answered. There is no marina at Scarborough.
O’Keeffe next called the Coleman County Sheriff’s office, and they sent a deputy to the lake to witness the angler’s personal-record bass. The sheriff’s deputy photographed O’Keeffe with his fish and they weighed it again. This time, it weighed 13 pounds, nine ounces. In his livewell, O’Keeffe later found a bluegill that the bass had regurgitated.
“I had a 24-inch tournament measuring board, and the bass was at least three inches longer than the board,” O’Keeffe said. “It was so long that it couldn’t maintain an upright position in my livewell. My primary concern was not to hurt the fish, so I released it.”
If O’Keeffe weren’t a friend of mine, few people would have heard about his fish. How many similar fish are caught and released? Nobody knows, but I would guess that undocumented 13-pounders equal or surpass the number that are reported.
Lake Fork fishing guide Randy Oldfield knows of four 13-pounders caught and released at Fork last spring. Oldfield caught one himself. He believes the fish have a better chance of surviving if they’re released immediately.
Other anglers don’t want to endure the considerable hassle of waiting hours for a hatchery truck and filling out the required paperwork. Still others are unable to get through on the ShareLunker hotline, 1-888-784-0600.
David Campbell, ShareLunker program leader, said he has received several incomplete calls to the 24-hour pager number.
“I think the calls are coming from cell phones in a poor coverage area,” Campbell said. “They usually have one or more numbers dropped, and I am unable to call them back.”
If you call the hotline number and don’t get an immediate response, keep calling until you do. Or you could do like O’Keeffe. He is rigging an oversized ice chest with an aerator. Whenever he goes fishing, the aerated ice chest will be in his Suburban, just in case.
E-mail rsasser@dallasnews.com
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Copyright (c) 2007, The Dallas Morning News
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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