West Texas fishing guide Tristan Marsh, 23, was out with a buddy on famed O.H. Ivie Lake on Sunday. The two parted ways late that afternoon, and Marsh’s friend dropped him off at a marina near his boat.
“I still had some daylight left for fishing, so I headed out on the lake in my boat alone,” Marsh tells Outdoor Life. “I ran to a big flat in the main mid-lake area. It’s deep, at 14 feet, but that’s where big bass bed on Ivie because they’re smart and shy from fishing pressure.”
Marsh has fished Ivie for about eight years and guided on it for several years during big bass season in the spring. He was focused on heavyweight largemouths, and he finally found a hefty fish on his forward-facing sonar around 6 p.m.
Using an 8-foot-long plug rod, he cast out a 6th Sense Panorama soft plastic that was 6.5 inches long and imitated a crappie. He’d rigged the bait on a 10/0 Shaky Head 7/8-ounce jig head to get it down fast to the bedded bass he could see on his sonar screen.
“It takes some time and effort to keep the [smaller] male from taking the lure off the bed,” Marsh says. “I’ve got to watch the fish closely on sonar and make sure a [much larger] female goes to the lure to take it. I can tell that happens when a female bass tips tail-up, vertical.”
That’s what happened with this fish when he set the hook.
After the strike the fish bore away but then came topside to jump. Using heavy rod pressure and 25-pound fluorocarbon line, Marsh worked the big girl close to his boat. And when the fish came up to jump a third time, he was able to get his net underneath.
“I knew the fish was over 13 pounds, but my boat scale’s batteries were dead, so I called my buddy Brett Cannon who lives on the lake,” Marsh says. “I told him I had a big one and ran to his house where we weighed it at thirteen pounds nine ounces.”
Marsh went to Elm Creek Marina, which has certified scales, and met owner David Quajardo who had earlier told Marsh that the lake had a 13-pound largemouth waiting for him “with Marsh’s name on it.”
“When we weighed it at Elm Creek, David told me that was the bass with my name on it that he told me about,” Marsh laughs.
His bass weighed 13.65 pounds, with a 26.5-inch length and a 20.75 girth. He then called the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department ShareLunker hotline and told them he had a bass for their renowned stocking program. The crew arrived later to transport the fish to the state hatchery in Athens.
Marsh’s 13.65-pound bass puts the number of Legacy ShareLunkers coming from O.H. Ivie at over 60. The sprawling lake east of San Angelo is perfect big bass habitat, with flooded brush, mesquite, oak, and juniper. In addition to the sheer number of trophies to come from the lake in recent years, it produced the state’s seventh heaviest largemouth of all time, according to TPWD. That 17.06 pounder was caught in 2022 by angler Brodey Davis.