Ross Gomez is arguably the luckiest bass angler in Texas. On the afternoon of January 22, he got off work to go fishing. He was trying to get on Lake Alan Henry just before a huge winter cold front slammed into the Lone Star State.
“I got off work a little late that afternoon,” Gomez told Wired2fish. “I wanted to fish from my boat, but didn’t get to the lake until about 3 p.m. Without much time to fish I headed to a dock I have permission to fish from.”
Gomez had basic crappie fishing tackle with him. But he decided to try a new plug for bass that cost him nearly $30.
“It’s a 4-inch Megabass Vision jerkbait in pro blue color,” said the 51-year-old corrections officer from Post, Texas. “I’d never tried it and wanted to see how it looked in the water.”
A Largemouth Bass with History
Gomez made a few casts with it off the dock and loved the way the plug dove and wiggled as he retrieved it in the lake.
“It really had a lively, lifelike action,” he said. “It looked a lot like the baitfish that hung around the dock I was fishing. I made a cast to the corner of the dock, and watched it dive down about two feet, then got a hit from a bass that came up from underneath the lure.”
The largemouth went straight down and deep, said Gomez, taking drag off his 6.5-foot spinning rod and reel spooled with 12-pound-test fluorocarbon line.
“I yelled to my buddy James Robbins who was also fishing on the dock to get a landing net,” Gomez explained. “The water was pretty cold and the fight wasn’t too long. I got her close to the dock, and James scooped her up and onto the dock.”
Gomez had a hand scale and weighed the fish that tallied over 14 pounds. He immediately phoned Natalie Goldstrohm with the Toyota Texas ShareLunker Program.
“I told her I caught another ‘Legacy’ largemouth [weighing over 13 pounds], and she said she’d send a crew with tanks to get my bass for the hatchery,” Gomez said.
Gomez had a large cooler in his nearby truck that he filled with lake water and put the big bass in it to keep it alive. Then he drove to Bubba’s Beer & Bait, which is near the lake. There the bass was weighed by owner Paula Smith, who used a certified scale that she’d just had recalibrated and certified that day. Smith officially weighed Gomez’s bass at 14.74 pounds. She also weighed Gomez Legacy bass that he caught from the same lake dock last year in mid-February, which weighed 14.78 pounds.
“I knew it was the same bass that he’d caught last year,” said Smith. “It was a beautiful bass with the same coloring, but a little grayer – maybe from being a little older.”
The bass was taken by a ShareLunker crew later that night and examined to learn if it was the same fish Gomez caught last February.
What Are the Odds?
Natalie Goldstrohm, the ShareLunker program coordinator, confirmed it is the same bass Gomez caught last year. It’s also the same Legacy bass that Gomez had caught while crappie fishing off the same dock in February 2023 when it weighed 13.22 pounds.
Both previous times Gomez’s bass was caught, biologists put a chip in the fish called a PIT Tag. It’s similar to the device pet owners put in their dogs and cats to verify the identity of their animals. Goldstrohm says that Legacy bass caught more than once is not uncommon. But a giant bass like Gomez’s being caught three times by the same person from the same place in a lake is a first for the program.
The double-digit bass will be spawned by biologists in a hatchery to produce genetically superior fry that will be stocked in Texas waters. After spawning, Gomez can meet fisheries personnel back at Lake Alan Henry to release his fish – for the third time.
Gomez says that the previous two times he released his lake “Legacy” bass the fish was returned to the water about two miles from the dock where he caught the largemouth. Remarkably, the fish returned to the same place where Gomez had caught it the second time in 2025. He’d also caught the bass from the same dock in 2023.
The ShareLunker Program rewards anglers who donate bass weighing over 13 pounds with a replica mount of the fish caught. Gomez already has two mounts of the same bass that he caught in 2023 and 2025. Soon he’ll have a third mount of the same bass to hang in his living room near his fireplace. He may be the only bass angler to have replica mounts of the same largemouth bass weighing over 13 pounds caught in different years from the same exact dock.
“The fact that it’s the same fish three times over four years is unreal,” said Gomez. “Lots of people fish that lake, and on that dock, too. But why me?”
