A bass like this is a once-in-a-lifetime fish.
Every bass angler dreams of catching the big one someday. A bass of epic proportions that will make all their fishing buddies green with envy. For many anglers, catching a bass ten pounds or larger is a lifetime goal. Catching one bigger than that is usually nothing more than a pipe dream. Even if you live in a big bass factory state like Texas, catching a bass that weighs in the teens is not very likely.
Even less likely is capturing the entire catch from cast to landing on film. Yet that is exactly what the anglers in today's video did with a 16.4-pound Texas giant that just happens to be the biggest bass caught in the Lone Star State in the last 20 years!
You will also gain a nice insight into the process of entering a big fish into the Texas Share Lunker fish breeding program. Oh, and stick around after that for three more giant bass catches that most anglers can only dream about.
What a beast! The most surprising part of this video was how these guys didn't really know what was on the other end of the line until that 16-pounder surfaced and the true size was known. We suppose that bass was simply too fat to fight! We cannot blame these guys for being so excited about these catches, we would have had the same reaction!
The Texas Share Lunker program has been a highly successful breeding program for a while. Biologists with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department takes the biggest bass caught by anglers every year and breed them in a fish hatchery to produce the best possible genetics for big fish. TPWD then stocks the fish all over the state to improve the fisheries.
And it works. They have detailed records on each fish's lineage too. Often, new entries to the program have been genetically tested and shown to have parents that were in the program. These guys see big bass every year, so it is probably no small statement to hear the guy say this was the biggest fish he's ever handled.
Those other three bass in the video were no slouches either. Talk about being in the right place at the right time to kill it on the pre-spawn bass. These are the kinds of catches that anglers dream about. It makes us want to get outside as soon as possible to wet a line ourselves!
For more outdoor content from Travis Smola, be sure to follow him on Twitter and check out his Geocaching and Outdoors with Travis YouTube channels.
NEXT: PETA IS NOW GOING AFTER FISHERMEN
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