How One Visionary Texan Created a Monster Fishery

ANYONE WHO HAS followed the storied history of Texas bass fishing is sure to be familiar with the legendary name, Bob Kemp.

Kemp was a Texas Parks and Wildlife Department fisheries scientist who rode shotgun over the department’s inland fisheries division in 1960s and early 1970s. His former colleagues have recalled him as a great boss, a stand-up guy and a visionary who didn’t mind bucking the system, particularly if he thought it would make fishing better.

Kemp passed away in December 1986, but his legacy lives on in chapters of Texas big bass lore that continue to unfold. That’s because he had a heavy hand in building the foundation for making Lone Star bass fishing the monster it is today. Not surprisingly, he went against the grain to help push the process along.

Kemp had a hunch Florida-strain bass would do well in the mild Texas climate. With a wealth of big, new lakes being constructed around the state at the time, he saw a grand opportunity to take Texas bass fishing to the next level by introducing fish genetically programmed to grow significantly faster, and larger, than the northern largemouths that had been produced in state hatcheries for years.

Northern largemouths lack the DNA to become giants. An eight-pound northern is big one and 10-pounder is a blimp. Floridas, meanwhile, frequently reach double digits. Females have been known to grow beyond 20 pounds in favorable environments.

Kemp approached his bosses multiple times about buying some fish to experiment with, but they refused to cough up the dough. Eventually, Kemp placed the order himself and paid the tab from his own pocket.

Kemp’s first batch of Florida bass fingerlings were flown to Texas in 1971. The fish arrived in oxygenated bags placed snugly inside two insulated boxes and were subsequently placed in growing ponds at the now defunct Tyler Fish Hatchery. The little bass grew to become future brooders that would eventually change the scope of Texas bass fishing forever.

Much has happened since Kemp authorized the first stocking of Florida bass into Lake Murvaul in 1972. Among other things, several state-of-the-art fish hatcheries have been erected that together produce around seven to eight million Florida bass offspring for stocking in dozens of Texas reservoirs each year. To date, nearly 300 million Florida bass have been stocked in more than 400 public reservoirs statewide.

Those fish have done amazingly well under careful management and restrictive regulations brainstormed by Kemp’s crafty successors. Craig Bonds is TPWD’s fifth inland fisheries chief since Kemp retired in the mid-1980s. Interestingly, Bonds wasn’t even born when Kemp laid the foundation for the state’s Florida bass program.

“I can’t imagine what Texas bass fishing would be like without Florida bass,” said Bonds, 46. “The fishing would still be good, but we wouldn’t have the five-fish, 30-pound limits showing up at different lakes like we have today. Our Top 50 largemouth bass list would look markedly different, too. Every fish on the list has some level of Florida influence.”

Furthermore, Bonds says anglers would have never experienced the phenomenal potential of Lake Fork without Florida bass in the mix. Fork is responsible for 60 percent of the fish on the Top 50 list. The remainder come from 13 other public reservoirs and three private lakes.

The widespread impact Florida bass have had on Texas bass fishing is evident by taking a historical look at state and water body weight records for a host of impoundments.

To wit:

The Texas state record in 1979 was a 13.50-pound freak caught from Lake Medina. This record had stood since 1943. I call the fish a “freak” because it wasn’t supposed to be there.

Genetics testing performed on a scale sample from skin mount of the Medina bass showed Florida genes in its DNA. Experts believe the fish found its way to the Hill Country reservoir by way of an undocumented private stocking that presumably occurred sometime in the 1930s. It certainly had nothing to do with TPWD earliest stockings, which began paying dividends in 1980.

That’s when Lake Monticello produced Texas’ first new state record in 37 years, a 14.09 pounder caught by Jimmy Kimbell. Kimbell’s fish was likely one of the 197,000 Florida offspring released in the 2,000-acre power plant lake in 1973, one year after it was built.

But Kimbell’s new record didn’t last for long. Amazingly, the benchmark was broken four more times by fish caught from three different lakes within five years. The heaviest (and most famous) of those fish belonged to Lake Fork guide Mark Stevenson, who caught a 17.67 pounder in November 1986. Stevenson’s record stood until Barry St. Clair busted it in January 1992 with an 18.18 pounder caught while crappie fishing near the Lake Fork dam.

Though Texas hasn’t seen a new state record in nearly 30 years, it has witnessed a steady wave of whopper bass catches that has since spread to dozens of lakes all over the state.

To date, more than 60 Texas impoundments have water body records in excess of 13 pounds. At many lakes, reports of bass in the 7-8 pound are so common that it doesn’t even raise eyebrows anymore, unless word leaks out the fish wasn’t released.

As earlier mentioned, some of the most compelling evidence to illustrate the impact Florida transplants have made on Texas bass fishing lies within the bowels of the state’s Top 50 list. It’s an impressive collection that has been rewritten so many times since mid-1980s that three former state records no longer qualify.

In fact, the only bass caught prior to 1986 that still holds a spot on the list is a 15.5 pounder reeled in from a private impoundment called Lake Echo way back in 1981. The smallest fish in the Top 50 is a 15.45 pounder.

Public waters in eastern Texas account for 39 of those giants. Fork has the majority (30), followed by Caddo (4), Pinkston, (1), Sam Rayburn (1), Mill Creek (1) Conroe (1) and Gibbons Creek (1). Out west, O.H. Ivie and O.C. Fisher have one Top 50 fish apiece, as do Falcon, Choke Canyon and Amistad in South Texas. In Central Texas, lakes Austin and Possum Kingdom have one entry each. Private lakes account for the remaining three.

TPWD’s Toyota Sharelunker tells another convincing tale about Florida bass stockings.

Since 1986, the program has seen nearly 600 bass upwards of 13 pounds put on loan to the state for spawning and genetics research. Those fish — either pure Floridas or intergrades — have been received from more than 60 different public reservoirs and their offspring are paving the way for a Florida hatchery program that will one day be built around descendants of fish weighing upwards of 13 pounds. According to Bonds, TPWD is on track to begin carrying out 100 percent of its annual Florida bass stockings using ShareLunker offspring by 2023.

Bob Kemp would probably be pretty happy about all of that.

 

—story by MATT WILLIAMS

 

 

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