Passport to Texas

Is this the size fish Lake Bois d’ Arc can look forward to producing?

Future Trophy Fish for Lake Bois d’ Arc? Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is Passport to Texas

Lake Bois d’ Arc, a new reservoir project 70 miles northeast of Dallas, may be the future hot spot for trophy largemouth bass

One of the main things we are doing is establishing some nursery ponds that we can come into and introduce some genetically superior largemouth bass strains that have the potential for growth into that trophy status over eight pounds or so.

Dan Bennett is a natural resources specialist with Parks and Wildlife

Those are Florida strain Largemouth bass and we are hoping that this is going to be the first opportunity to come into a new reservoir with some of those ShareLunker offspring that are produced at our Freshwater Center in Athens. The ShareLunker are fish over 13 pounds and larger that have been donated to our selective breeding program.

ShareLunkers are fish with proven genetic potential to reach a trophy size.

So we are hoping that those fish we stocked in those nursery ponds come through that program. If that’s the case, we should be able to track those fish long term. Once this reservoir has existed for eight or ten years, we may be seeing some large fish caught by anglers over there that we can then genetically trace them back to a particular lineage that may have originated from that hatchery down in Athens.

The Sport Fish Restoration program supports our series.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.