As we reported last month, bass fishing for giant Texas largemouths has been hot this year. Yes, they say everything is bigger in Texas, but thanks to the wildly popular ShareLunker program, bass fishing tops that list. Just last week, Oklahoma fisherman Brodey Davis caught a 17.06-pound bass that is likely, according to state officials, the biggest bass caught and officially weighed in the Lone Star State in the last 30 years. It’s exceeded only by Barry St. Clair’s 18.8-pound Lake Fork largemouth caught in 1992. Davis of Tuttle, Oklahoma, drove to 19,000-acre O.H. Ivie Reservoir, located east of San Angelo, with big bass on his mind.
“It’s been an unbelievable day,” USA Today reported Davis said. “We drove from Oklahoma to specifically fish O.H. Ivie for a double-digit bass. My son Stetson, who is nine, was out of school due to the winter storm that went through Oklahoma earlier this week.”
The 27.25-inch long female bass’ girth measured 23.25 inches, swollen from the eggs she was carrying. The fish hit a 6th Sense Divine Swimbait lure, and Davis’ son Stetson netted and boated his dad’s bass. The 17.06-pounder is reported to be the new O.H. Ivie record, and it’s being called the seventh biggest bass ever caught in Texas. The world record largemouth weighed 22 pounds, 4 ounces, and it was caught from Montgomery Lake, Georgia, in June 1932.
In recent years, no Texas lake has gotten more press for yielding giant largemouths than O.H. Ivie. The lake has such a great reputation of producing lunker largemouths that the Toyota ShareLunker Program is working with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department to maintain a live tank on the reservoir’s shores this spring for weighing and keeping lively bass donated to the state project.
The program breeds giant bass over 13 pounds for re-stocking Texas waters and maintaining the high fisheries standard for which the state has become well known.