Lake X’s are supposed to be secret. Mercury Motors for about 30 years had its famed Lake X for testing new equipment before it hit the market. Now, Texas Parks & Wildlife has its own Lake X: a secret private lake where largemouth bass are being studied under its Operation World Record program.
The secret is out, thanks to two videos on the Internet. The 100-acre body of water is a reclaimed lignite coal mine pit, located at the Big Brown Mine in East Texas.
Lake X is stocked with fish from TPW’s largemouth bass breeding program---which only grows offspring from pure Florida-strain largemouth bass. The purpose: study how big the fish grow and how fast they grow.
TPW has a contract with Luminant so it can conduct its research there. Luminant approached TPW about using the lake, and the company donated access and management rights to TPW for 15 years.
The contract started five years ago, said Allen Forshage, director of the Texas Freshewater Fisheries Center in Athens. “They just agreed to let us do research over there,” he said. Regulations required Luminate to restore the mine to an environmentally friendly condition that is near its original state once the company finished using it. In this case, a lake was suitable for meeting the regulations.
“The pond provides an ideal habitat because it’s a private pond located entirely on company property,” said Luminant spokeswoman Ashley Monts in an e-mail to Lone Star Outdoor News. “Controlled access helps ensure survivability – in other words, the fish are allowed to grow to their full potential. The pond also has both deep and shallow areas which provide significant forage opportunities (for fish).” -- Other private lakes under contract with TPW have been stocked with offspring from the breeding program, but they are owned by private individuals.
Lake X is 60-65 feet deep. This depth allows bass to survive cold weather better during winter, Forshage said. Pure Florida-strain bass are not as well adapted to colder water as their Northern-strain counsins.
The goal of Operation World Record is to produce the next world record largemouth bass through selective breeding. Researchers working at the five-year-old Lake X are studying size/growth rate of OWR offspring; collecting DNA samples to form a family tree; and weighing/ measuring them.
The public is not allowed to fish Lake X, but the same research, also using offspring from the breeding program, is going on at some public lakes in Texas, such as Raven, Pinkston, Purtis Creek and Meridian. Given the lakes’ small size, fewer fish have to be stocked there.
Source:April 23 Lone Star Outdoor News
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