Richland Chambers Is Being Restocked With ShareLunker Bass. When Will Anglers Notice?

On a Sunday afternoon in late January 2025, Dylan Sorrells of Dallas was scouting Richland Chambers for an upcoming Texas High School Bass Association tournament. He went to a main-lake flat to look for brush piles. "I was trolling around on scope and just saw the fish sitting out there," he told Texas Parks and Wildlife. He figured it might be a catfish. It turned out to be a 13.64-pound largemouth, entered as ShareLunker 671.

That fish was the lake's fifth Legacy Class ShareLunker ever, and the first since Jeremy Bruton of Blooming Grove brought in a 13.05-pounder on March 9, 2008. The lake record is still the 14.25-pound bass Brian Scott Arnold of Weatherford caught on April 22, 1995.

The same year Sorrells caught his fish, the lake's stocking record changed in a way most people who fish here have probably never seen. The change is less about how many bass go into Richland Chambers. It's about whose offspring they are.

Two Names on the Stocking Table That Look Alike and Aren't

TPWD keeps a public stocking history for Richland-Chambers. For 2026 it lists two entries: 373,990 Sunshine bass fingerlings and 309,914 Lone Star bass fingerlings.

They read like cousins, but they aren't. TPWD describes the Sunshine bass as a cross between a white bass and a striped bass. It's one of the lake's hybrid stripers. The Lone Star bass is a largemouth. When TPWD announced the program in May 2022, it said the name covers pure Florida-strain largemouth bred only from broodfish that came out of Legacy Class ShareLunker entries, the 13-pound-plus fish anglers loan to the state each winter.

The hybrids and the largemouth sit side by side on the table, but they're two separate fisheries. The largemouth line is the one that changed.

The Gap, Then the Pedigree

Here's the largemouth side of the Richland Chambers stocking record from 2015 through 2026, taken from the same TPWD table.

The 2025 and 2026 Lone Star numbers are about the same size as a typical Florida largemouth year in the late 2010s. So the lake isn't getting a flood of extra bass. What's different is where the fish come from. The earlier stockings were Florida-strain fish. The new ones are, in TPWD's words, "2nd generation offspring of pure Florida strain ShareLunker Largemouth Bass that have proven to be able to grow to ≥ 13 pounds."

TPWD has been working toward this for decades. The agency began stocking pure Florida-strain largemouth in 1974, and the state record went from about 13.5 pounds to 18.18 pounds by 1992. The ShareLunker program started in 1986. The 2022 shift moved TPWD's hatchery broodstock entirely to offspring of Legacy-class fish, which the agency said would let it stock 6 to 8 million ShareLunker descendants across Texas each year.

Why Richland Chambers Made the List

TPWD explained its reasoning for this lake in its most recent fisheries management survey, the 2022 report, based on work from 2021 through 2023. Black bass were the most popular fishery on the reservoir, drawing 54% of directed angling effort. That's up from 52% in the creel survey before it. The biologists also found what they called "a greatly improved trophy fishery."

"The most recent creel survey provided indications of a greatly improved trophy fishery with 2% of the Largemouth Bass released estimated at 7 pounds or greater, a percentage comparable to other excellent trophy Largemouth Bass fisheries throughout the state."

The same section counts 9 Elite Class bass of 10 to 13 pounds and 23 Lunker Class bass of 8 to 10 pounds reported from Richland Chambers since 2018. It also notes that the lake's most recent Legacy fish at that point dated to 2008. The report then draws its conclusion: "Given the abundant forage and good body condition of Largemouth Bass, stocking Lone Star Largemouth Bass is likely to improve and maintain trophy abundance."

TPWD published that plan in 2023, and Sorrells caught ShareLunker 671 in January 2025. The lake already had the big bass and the forage to feed them. The stocking adds parents with proven size to that base.

The ShareLunker program also returns fish to their source lakes. The Lufkin Daily News reported in 2025 that most offspring and donor fish go back to the lakes that produced them, and the 2025 table includes 14,689 fingerlings listed specifically as ShareLunker largemouth.

The Catch in the Plan: Shoreline Cover

The same management plan sets a condition. TPWD's strategy is to stock Lone Star fingerlings at 1,000 per kilometer of shoreline each year "when quality littoral habitat is present." It explains that a young largemouth's odds of survival are "greatly influenced by the availability of littoral habitat."

Richland Chambers has very little of that habitat. The 2022 survey found native aquatic vegetation covering less than 0.1% of the reservoir, mostly pondweed and American lotus. TPWD notes that vegetation here has historically been scarce. This is why Sorrells' account matters. He found his fish on a main-lake flat while looking for brush piles, not in a weed bed.

When the 2025 and 2026 Fish Could Show Up

Richland Chambers has a 14-inch minimum length for largemouth and smallmouth bass, with a five-fish combined daily bag, according to TPWD's lake-specific regulations. The current Outdoor Annual is valid from September 1, 2026, through August 31, 2027.

The best local growth figure comes from TPWD's 2018 survey, which found Richland Chambers largemouth averaged 2.1 years old at 14 inches. In 2022, biologists sampled only three fish between 13.0 and 14.9 inches, too few to update that estimate.

Using that older average as a rough guide, the timeline looks like this:

1. 2025 Lone Star cohort: if growth matches the 2018 average, these fish start reaching 14 inches around 2027.
2. 2026 Lone Star cohort: on the same pace, around 2028.
3. Trophy size: a 13-pound fish takes many more years, and no TPWD source here gives a timeline for it. The program is meant to raise the odds that some of these fish get there, not to promise that any will.

Growth varies with forage, water and cover, so treat those years as estimates. In the meantime, the lake keeps producing big bass. ShareLunker records list two Elite Class fish over 10 pounds from Richland Chambers in early 2025, on February 17 and March 28, and three Lunker Class entries between March and May 2026.

If a Giant Hits Your Line This Winter

The lake's next Legacy fish will keep this cycle going. The Toyota ShareLunker site runs an annual season, and a 13-pound-plus bass caught between January 1 and March 31 can be loaned to TPWD for its breeding and stocking program. Based on TPWD's 2026 season release, here's how it works:

• Call the hotline: (903) 681-0550. In 2026, TPWD took Legacy reports around the clock through March 31.
• Weigh it: Legacy fish are confirmed on a certified scale. A digital scale is fine for a first reading, and the TPWD team takes the certified weight when it arrives.
• Don't worry about distance: Richland Chambers doesn't have an official ShareLunker weigh and holding station, and the closest listed stations are around Lake Fork and Tyler State Park. TPWD says its staff will travel anywhere in Texas to pick up a big bass. The fish go to the Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center in Athens.
• Log smaller lunkers too: any bass over 8 pounds or 24 inches can be entered year-round through the ShareLunker app or website, in the Bass Pro Shops Lunker (8 lb.+), Strike King Elite (10 lb.+) or Lew's Legend (13 lb.+) classes.

Those smaller entries also count for something. The 2022 management plan specifically calls for promoting ShareLunker reporting on Richland Chambers to track its trophy catches.

Rules and dates above come from TPWD's published pages and can change between seasons. This post is general information, not legal advice, so check the current Outdoor Annual and ShareLunker rules before you keep or transport a fish.

If you're thinking about a home that puts you closer to the main-lake flats where Sorrells found his fish, John Teel and the Teel Team know which shorelines fit how you like to fish. Contact Us and we'll help you find the right spot on Richland Chambers.