Thanks guys. First, I DID NOT catch this fish. I was spraying coontail, and kept seeing something sticking out of the water. I finally figured out it was a LMB tail. That's not a good sign. I went and got a net and my wife, and we spent almost 2 hours trying to net her. I would see her upside down on the bottom, but she would swim away. I finally got her netted, but she felt soft in the belly to me. That's another bad sign.
I wanted to see why her stomach was so soft, so I checked. There was nothing there but a tumor/growth of some sort. Her liver was diseased also.
Short story long, she weighed 9.11#, but was 3/4" longer than the TX state record of 18#. RW was 87%. I do know she was in old age decline, but I sure would like to have seen her caught her in her prime.
But, I really try to save these larger fish for guests, so I hope she had been hooked at some point before. Whatever the reason for her demise, she probably gave me 9-10 years of her genetics. That ain't a bad thing at all.
