Posted: Fri, 5 Mar 2010 07:33 PM - 7,081 Readers

By: David Campbell

 For most diehard fishing fans, a largemouth bass weighing 13 pounds or more would be considered the catch of a lifetime, all by itself. The angler who catches Toyota ShareLunker No. 500 will earn the usual ShareLunker booty plus a cash bonus of $500 a pound.

The prize money, announced this week, was put up by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation. It's the agency's way of commemorating a milestone fish that's likely to be caught before the current ShareLunker season ends April 30.

Texans caught three ShareLunkers from three separate lakes on Feb. 27, making it 12 fish entered in the current season and 483 entries since the ShareLunker concept was created in 1986.

A ShareLunker is a largemouth bass that weighs a minimum of 13 pounds. All really big bass are females. Anglers give or loan their ShareLunkers to TP&W's Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center, where the big females are bred to genetically superior males in hopes of creating supersized fish.

The jury is still out on whether the concept works, but TFFC director Allen Forshage says the idea makes perfect sense.

"Everything we know about genetics leads us to believe that fish produced by parents that grow big are more likely to grow big themselves," Forshage said.

Anglers who enter fish in the program receive a free replica mount of their fish plus special ShareLunker clothing. If a Texas angler enters the biggest fish of the season, he or she receives a lifetime fishing license valued at $1,000.

A lifetime license was also awarded as a bonus to the angler who caught ShareLunker No. 300, caught in 2000. ShareLunker No. 400, caught in 2006, was worth $400 a pound plus a custom fishing rod.

Now there's the $500 cash bonus for entry No. 500. The minimum-sized 13-pounder would earn a bonus of $6,500, enough cash to finance an entire fishing season for most casual anglers.

At the current pace, I expect the cash sow to be caught by mid-April. Last Saturday, 13-pounders struck at Lakes Amistad, O.H. Ivie and Austin. That's the second time in program history that three ShareLunkers were caught on the same February day.

Multiple catches are much more likely to occur in March. Three or more ShareLunkers have been caught on a single day in March on seven occasions. The record is five on one day.

Bass fanatics tend to believe that spawning waves of big bass are prompted by the full moon from February through May. Saturday's catches would seem to prove that theory since the full moon occurred on Sunday.

ShareLunker officials, however, say that an examination of all lunker records indicate that most of the big fish are caught on weekends, when fishing pressure is heaviest. You can research ShareLunker records at www.tpwd.state.tx.us. Last weekend happened to coincide with a full moon.

Carl Adkins of San Marcos caught the Lake Austin lunker, which weighed 13.1 pounds. It's an urban fish, caught near the Loop 360 bridge in water that measured 51 degrees. Randy Jackson of Mineral Wells caught a 13.03-pounder from Lake O.H. Ivie. The water temperature in that lake was 43 degrees on the surface.

At Lake Amistad, where Teddy Silcox of Del Rio caught a 13.02-pounder, the water temperature was 52 degrees.

The Silcox fish was the second of the season from Amistad. Jackson's fish was the third of the season for O.H. Ivie. Lake Livingston is the only East Texas public lake to produce a ShareLunker this season.