Toyota kicks off 2024 campaign Jan.1, all eyes on Lake O.H. Ivie

Each January, usually about the turn of the New Year, excitement builds among bass anglers who dream of the big bite. The really ambitious ones might ponder thoughts of catching a Legacy Lunker.

Legacy Lunkers are the heart and soul of Texas Parks and Wildlife’s Toyota ShareLunker program, a spawning and genetics research campaign aimed at producing bigger and better bass for Texas anglers to catch. The program is built around cooperative anglers willing to loan big Texas-caught bass to the state for selective spawning in hatchery raceways.

Legacy Lunkers are special for several reasons. The mega bass are always females. Fish must weigh 13 pounds or more, and be caught between January 1 and March 31 to qualify. Anglers can call the Share-Lunker hotline at (903) 681-0550 to report their Legacy catch, night or day.

Fish caught and loaned during the designated collection season are transported by state hatchery truck to the program headquarters at the Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center in Athens for genetics testing and evaluation. Bass with pure Florida DNA are believed to be genetically superior to crossbreeds, also called intergrades.

When the timing is right, the big females are transferred to hatchery raceways and paired for spawning with select male bass produced by former ShareLunkers. The idea is to make armies of baby bass with shared big bass DNA.

A big portion of Share-Lunker prodigy are stocked back into Texas lakes each year. TPWD also used the program to rebuild its Florida bass hatchery program with female and male offspring from Legacy Lunkers.

In time, every batch of Florida largemouth bass fingerlings stocked in Texas lakes will be descendants of bass that grew beyond 13 pounds. The agency is calling these fish “Lone Star Bass,” but in reality they are still Florida bass.

Lake Fork fishing guide Mark Stevenson helped jump start the program in 1986 with the inaugural entry. Stevenson’s former state record weighed 17.67 pounds.

The program has hit a few bumps over the last 38 years, but remains what is arguably the most high profile public outreach program ever launched by the state agency. To date, ShareLunker has taken in 650 Legacy Lunkers from 75 public reservoirs and 20 private lakes scattered around the state. Participating anglers are rewarded with cool prizes and widespread recognition through press releases and social media posts. Plus, they earn shots in two separate yearend drawings for $5,000 Bass Pro Shops gift certificates.

Hundreds of other fish have been entered digitally in three additional program categories. The lowest level category is called “Lunker Class.” It is open for bass as small as eight pounds or 24 inches in length.

The next category is for fish weighing between 10 and 12.99 pounds. It’s called the “Lunker Elite.”

The “Lunker Legend” category is for fish weighing upwards of 13 pounds that are caught outside the spawning season. Check out texassharelunker.com for a full list of entry requirements and instructions.

All Eyes on ‘Ivie There was a time when Lake Fork owned the Share-Lunker show, but not anymore. Fork has produced three Legacy Lunkers since 2019.

Lake O.H. Ivie has had the hottest hand of all Texas lakes for heavyweight bass in recent times. The reservoir near San Angelo has been on fire with lunkers for three years now.

‘Ivie has produced 41 Legacy Class fish over 13 pounds for the Toyota ShareLunker program since 2019. It cranked out an all-time high 15 entries in 2023, including a 17.03 pounder that ranks No. 8 among Texas’ biggest bass of all time.

The lake kicked out a combined total of 24 Legacy lunkers during the 2021 and 2022 collection seasons, including a lake record 17.06 pounder that is the biggest Texas bass reported since 1992.

Impressive as those records may sound, the sheer number of double-digit fish that have been caught and released there over the last three years would probably shock the imagination if it were possible to put a finger on the total.

Depending on who you talk to, the big bonanza at ‘Ivie doesn’t appear to be showing any signs of dying down anytime soon.

Josh Jones is a fishing guide and forward facing sonar expert who has arguably caught more giants from ‘Ivie than anyone.

To wit: He’s the first angler to turn in four Legacy Lunkers. In September, Jones told me his boat had accounted for 84 double-digit bass at ‘Ivie during 90 days of guiding in 2023 alone.

He said he and his clients have cracked 50 pounds on their heaviest five fish 10 times. Last September, Jones and Larry Walker of Irving topped 50 pounds twice in as many days. He’s lost track of time he has cracked 30 pounds.

Other guides like Brady Stanford, Wendell Ramsey, Brandon Burks and Dalton Smith have reported their share of storybook fishing days at ‘Ivie, many of them coming as the result of using forward facing sonar to sniff out suspended fish and making casts that otherwise would not have been made.

In November, Smith guided Mississippi angler Shawn Strength to the No. 14 heaviest Texas bass of all-time, a 16.65 pounder. Burks recently made a Facebook post highlighting his five biggest bass of 2023 — 12.55, 12.44 13.12, 12.73 and 12.32 for a total of 63.13 pounds.

Starving for Water The point to be made by all of this is ‘Ivie is still loaded with giant bass. How long the magical run will last is anybody’s guess.

TPWD fisheries biologist Lynn Wright thinks the lake may have already reached the peak of its current big bass cycle. He is expecting 2024 to be a good year. Beyond that is anybody’s guess, mainly because ‘Ivie has a nemesis that no one can deny.

The lake is currently more than 30 feet below full and starving for water.

With such a robust bass population crammed into a shrinking body of water, something is eventually going to have to give, Wright said.

“Falling water levels will result in less backwater areas and fish moving into main channel areas,” Wright said. “This will concentrate the bass fin the short term, but will also increase competition for food and space and may result in poor fish condition.”

Wright says he is already seeing signs of dwindling forage in smaller, younger age class fish.

“Fall sampling data has shown over the last two years that bass from 12-18 inches were in below average condition,” he said. “However, once bass reached about 20 inches the condition was good, likely due to being able to consume larger prey items. Beyond 2024 I think we’ll see bass condition continue to decline if we don’t get some good rain and a significant rise in water level.”

While ShareLunker entry numbers in O.H. Ivie remain significantly stronger than any other Texas lake, Wright pointed to a decline in mega-sized bass over the last two years as a possible sign the fish aren’t getting enough eat.

“We observed half the number Lunkers over 14 pounds in 2023 (7) compared to 14 over 14 pounds in 2022,” he said. “This may be a result of falling water levels and greater competition for food.”

Plenty of anglers have speculated over the last couple of years about the possibility that a new state record might be finning around in ‘Ivie. Wright believes it certainly possible, but thinks the chances were a lot better a year or so ago than they are now.

“On one hand we’ve had two bass over 17 pounds caught in the last two years,” he said. “It’s possible there could be one out there in the mid-18s. On the other hand, water levels in O.H. Ivie are still dropping and fish weights are down a bit. So, while it’s possible, I think changing reservoir conditions are moving in a direction that it’s less likely we’ll see a state record compared to previous years.”

Matt Williams is a freelance writer based in Nacogdoches. He can be reached by e-mail, mattwillwrite4u@yahoo.com.