There was good news and bad news last week for Texas Parks and Wildlife's Budweiser ShareLunker program. The bad news is that Anheuser-Busch, bought last year by a European company, is dropping its TP&W sponsorships, which includes the highly touted lunker program.

The good news is that Ronnie Arnold of Karnack, Texas, caught a Caddo Lake lunker weighing 15.1 pounds. That's the second-biggest bass ever reported from the venerable East Texas lake. Caddo has been enlarged by a Corps of Engineers dam, but it's known as one of the state's few natural lakes.

Arnold's 15-pounder is exciting for a number of reasons. Of 10 bass bigger than 13 pounds entered as ShareLunkers this season, this is the fourth fish weighing 15 pounds or more. Caddo is the third lake to yield a 15-pounder. That's a program record.

The heavyweight leader in the clubhouse (the Lunker Bunker at Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center) is a 15.93-pounder, a lake record from Lake Conroe. A 15.45-pounder from Choke Canyon Reservoir set a new standard for that South Texas lake, which earlier this year produced another 15-pounder – the first time any lake other than Lake Fork has yielded two bass heavier than 15 pounds in a season. Arnold's fish is the sixth ShareLunker from Caddo but the first from that lake since 1998.

"This has been an exciting season for the lunker program," said TFFC director Allen Forshage. "We've already got nine entries, and March is traditionally the best month for big bass. Our goal was to have big bass being caught throughout the state, and that's what we're seeing this season."

For fishing fans unfamiliar with ShareLunkers, they are largemouth bass weighing 13 pounds or more that anglers catch, then donate or loan to TP&W. Biologists use the fish to spawn what they hope are genetically superior largemouth bass capable of reaching gargantuan sizes.

The program started in 1986 under the name Lone Star Lunkers and has been a huge public relations success and may yet create 20-pound largemouth bass hereabouts.

When Budweiser came on as a sponsor in 1994, the Lone Star Lunker title was changed to Budweiser ShareLunker. I'm not sure who coined the clumsy term "ShareLunker," but it probably wasn't one of the Anheuser-Busch advertising talents responsible for the company's highly entertaining Super Bowl ads.

Loss of sponsorship money is never good for a state agency, but this one could work out well for TP&W. A lot of anglers, me included, never really liked the link between alcoholic beverages and this popular fishing program. Beer and fishing sent a bad subliminal message for a sport that appeals so strongly to children.

With Budweiser out of the picture, it's time to ditch the term ShareLunker and return to plain, old Lone Star Lunkers, though Lone Star Brewery was an original sponsor. Lone Star Lunkers also says "Lone Star State."

The door is wide open for prospective sponsors, preferably from the fishing tackle industry, but any large corporation wishing to project a greener image should be willing to have its name as the preface for (your company name here) Lone Star Lunkers.

According to an electronic service that monitors such things, the ShareLunker program garners 55 percent of all publicity generated by 16 TP&W hunting, fishing, state parks, camping and naturalist programs.

Add up all the big-fish news stories generated by ShareLunkers between July 2008 and Feb. 19, 2009, and the program sponsor realized nearly $1.5 million worth of advertising exposure, the service said.