Passport to Texas

Guadalupe Bass (Micropterus treculii)

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This is Passport to Texas.

Anglers like Courtney and Brandon Robinson are chasing Guadalupe bass, the state fish of Texas.

Fish on! This is why I love catching Guads. They’re little fish but they use the river to fight.

Guadalupe bass once seemed headed for extinction. In the 1970s, state biologists stocked non-native smallmouth bass in Texas rivers. They didn’t expect the smallmouths would cross-breed with native fish. But they did, producing hybrid offspring that were no longer pure Guadalupes.

From 1990s through roughly 2010 almost a million Guadalupe bass were stocked in the river and it drove down the hybridization rates dramatically.

Tim Birdsong once played pro baseball for the Cincinnati Reds. Today he leads Texas Parks and Wildlife efforts to restore river watersheds.

 [The] Guadalupe bass is representative of that whole set of species and some of those are considered imperiled; they may only occur in one river and nowhere else in the world. And it’s a little bit more difficult to get enthusiasm around conserving a minnow or conserving an imperiled freshwater mussel, but what’s good for Guadalupe bass is generally good for those other species.

Learn more about the Guadalupe Bass in July on our podcast Under the Texas Sky. Find it on Spotify, iTunes and other places where you get your podcasts.

The Sport Fish Restoration Program supports our series.

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

Guadalupe Bass (Micropterus treculii)

Return of the Guadalupe Bass Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is Passport to Texas

Dang it! Was that a fish? Yes, He was right in that foam line!

Anglers like Courtney and Brandon Robinson love to fish for Guadalupe bass, named for the Guadalupe River.

Fish on! This is why I love catching Guads, they’re little fish, but they use the river to fight!

The Guadalupe is a stronghold stream for this lone star native, which the legislature dubbed the state fish of Texas in 1989. Decades ago, this little fish seemed destined for extinction. But today it’s coming back.

I want my kids to catch Guadalupe bass. And I want them to be able to do it in the same places that I do.

Chris Johnson leads guided fly-fishing trips. The beautiful rivers the bass live in have a growing army of passionate advocates working to keep these waters clean.

 At end of the day, lovers will always work harder than workers. And if you love what you’re doing, and you love what you’re about, you love your fish, you love your water, you love your state, you love the ground that it flows through, then you’re going to fight to protect it.

Learn more about efforts to restore the Guadalupe Bass and preserve our rivers on our podcast Under the Texas Sky this July. Find it at underthetexassky.org, and wherever you get your podcasts.

The Sport Fish Restoration Program supports our series.

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

Fishing for Guadalupe bass in the South Llano River

TPW TV - Guadalupe Bass Back in South Llano Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is Passport to Texas

Courtney and Brandon Robinson love to fly-fish for Guadalupe Bass in the South Llano River.

[Courtney] We’re not looking at a whole lot of deep pools, it’s more shallow water, skinny water.
[Brandon] Fish on! This is why I love catching Guad’s, their little fish, but they use the river to fight!
[Courtney] Um so we’re gonna see little bass in the shoal’s area like in that little rapids area over there. Oh, there we go!

The state fish of Texas wasn’t always easy to catch. It was on the brink of disappearing from the South Llano, due to introduced Small Mouth Bass that crossbred with the native Guadalupe for decades!

They can breed with each other and what results is what we call a hybrid, and those fish, they’re not our pure native Guadalupe bass, so we’re trying to restore these populations throughout the state.
We’re stocking large numbers of these pure fingerlings, and what the goal is these pure fish outnumber the Hybrids and so we reduce that overall hybridization rate and get it back to where we have almost an entirely pure population of Guadalupe Bass.

But the data shows the Guadalupe Bass are back.

We’ve been working on the Guadalupe Bass here in the Texas Hill country for about twenty-five years, and been really successful in restoring these populations in these iconic Texas hill country streams, and now we have Guadalupe Bass in a lot more reaches of these streams here for people to enjoy!

Reel in an eyeful of Guadalupe bass the week of September 23 on the Texas Parks and Wildlife TV show on PBS.

The Sport Fish restoration program supports our series.

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