Will There Ever Be New State Records?

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HAVE WE ENTERED an era without realizing it?

Has the insane level of fishing pressure, combined with fisheries habitat loss and pollution brought us to a place where there will be no more state records of popular sportfish?

I recently did an episode of my Higher Calling Wildlife podcast (sponsored by Texas Fish & Game) and pondered whether we would ever see a fish eclipse the 13-pound state record flounder caught by Herbert Endicott in 1976.

That’s 47 years folks.

The world record flounder weighed 20 pounds, 9 ounces and was caught in Florida 40 years ago this year. The feedback was pretty much unanimous that we have passed the record era of the species.

Texas’s 18.18-pound state record largemouth bass was caught by Barry St. Clair in 1992.

There’s only one fish in Texas’s Top 10 fish that was caught after that 1990s and that was Brodey Davis’s 17.06 mutant-sided lunker caught on O.H. Ivie and it sits at number seven.

Bass are in a unique position on this list because they are the only fish here bred specifically to produce monster fish. Fingerlings from Sharelunkers (13 pounds or larger) are released all around the state, so a state record bass isn’t out of the question. But even with all that hard work toward a mega bass, only one has cracked theTexas Top 10 since the 90s.

Speckled trout are an interesting case in this record discussion as coastal freezes, habitat losses and fishing pressure are no doubt having an impact.

It’s important to look back at history for some perspective on this. Carl “Bud” Rowland caught the current official state record speckled trout May 23, 2002 in Lower Laguna Madre. It weighed 16 pounds and measured a monstrous 37 inches.

This replaced the record trout Jim Wallace caught in 1996 in Baffin Bay that weighed 13 pounds, 11 ounces.

Wallace’s fish beat the 13-9 record held by Mike Blackwood set in 1975. It took 21 years for that record to fall.

One could look at major coastal freeze kills as being a limiting factor in big trout production, and that’s a valid point, but Wallace’s fish came seven years after the major freeze kill of 1989. That fish was definitely born before the freeze.

That should give anglers hope of what is possibly still swimming the waters of the Texas coast or what will appear in a few years.

Is it possible for the genetics of a species to grow to epic sizes to be lost?

The Texas record sand trout was 6.5 pounds and caught 51 years ago. The Louisiana state record sand trout was a whopping 11 pounds and was caught in 1973.

Their number 10 fish was caught in 1975 and weighed 7.25 pounds.

The biggest sandie I have ever caught was about 10 years ago and it weighed 2.5 pounds. I was absolutely shocked at catching one so big.

When was the last time you caught one that weighed over a pound? Think about it.

Even our crappie records are pretty old.

While the four-pound black crappie record was taken on Toledo Bend in 2002, the 4.56-pound record white crappie was caught on Navarro Mills in 1968.

In terms of our everyday fishing, this doesn’t matter.

Very few of us ever catch a record fish of any kind and it usually never enters our minds. The goal is to enjoy ourselves and maybe catch a few for the frying pan or beat our personal best fish.

This is not about looking back at the “glory day” or any of that nonsense.

But it is worth examining for a conservation perspective. How much pressure are we putting on fish? Does changes in weather patterns and frequency of cold and hot extremes have an impact on our fish that we are just now starting to notice?

I have no doubt the reason we don’t see those super big sand trout catches any longer is due to the literal billions of sand trout caught in shrimping trawls over the years.

A resource can only take so much and perhaps it responded by the species no longer growing to large sizes. Or maybe as I suggested before, those genetics are gone.

Texas is having incredible bass fishing right now, and the crappies are always biting it seems. Trout have struggled on much of the coast due to the freeze of 2021 and concerns linger over another weather event. Flounders are at a serious low, and there are questions about the species future from here to South Carolina. Even Louisiana issued a fall closure this year.

Let that sink in.

I believe we need to look back at record catches of the past every once in a while and question what we’re doing. If 20 years from now, we still haven’t had a new state record speckled trout, then maybe that shows a permanent shift in our fishery.

We all as anglers need to realize we are losing habitat every day. If we publish an article on bag limit changes, we get hundreds of responses.

When it comes to habitat, the response is much less passionate. “l need to put more focus on the health of our fisheries, habitat and waterways so we can have healthy fisheries for generations to come.”

You never know, if we do the right things, maybe someone will shatter one of these records and blow our minds.

 

Email Chester Moore at cmoore@fishgame.com

 

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