Pond Boss Forums FISH & FISHING Show off your catch Share a Lunker and a football rig?

Saw this article. Very nice news for those in Texas!
Someone explain the 'football rig' to me please?
And to clarify, once these fish are donated to 'share a lunker' do they go in tanks and spend the rest of their days in captivity while they are studied or their eggs harvested? Or are they released in the same BOW or a different BOW to be caught again?

Share a Lunker by way of football rig

I was aware of the Sam Rayburn 13 lb'er caught at the Bass Champs Tournament but not of the Lake Austin fish. So, that's two larger sized fish in the past few weeks. Just so those will know, if the two lmb are not 98% pure florida they will not be used in the breeding program, Here on Caddo lake there was a 16+ caught a couple of years ago but was not used because it was not that pure florida but most likely an F1. I forget the percentage of florida in the fish.

A football jig is a jig fished on bottom that has the head shaped like a football and one that is not a basket ball shape. Gives it a wabble when dragged on bottom.

My partner and I caught (at the time) the lake Sam Rayburn lake record LMB. It was near 14 pounds. T parks and wildlife picked her up and took her to Athens to the hatchery. When they were finished with her they brought her back to us at San Augustine Park boat ramp and put her in our boat. We drove her back out where we caught her and dropped her off!!

Wow this is cool. So the big fish get genetic testing and if they have the right signature then they keep them long enough to have them lay eggs (or do they extract the eggs?) I'm assuming they only have so many days to get these lunkers in their program before the natural spawn happens. Then when done they try to get them back to the same lake. They must have to be careful to keep them from getting stressed and stay alive in captivity and during transport.

They should do that for other highly prized large fish species like NP, muskie, maybe sturgeon?

Lots of good info and results from the program but it is not an inexpensive endeavor .

Texas is bigtime when it comes to their breeding and lake stocking program. They can even take those trophy fish (like Flames) from any lake and will track the genetic markers to see which of the breeders the fish came from. In other words they can track the babies from Flames fish years later. The fish from Austin might have come from Flames fish and TP&W will let us know if it was Flames fish Genetics.

Flame, how long did you guys have to hold over the trophy for TP&W. Did you guys just keep it in the livewell of the boat? Just wondering since i have plans of catching simular here on Caddo