Professional bass angler Kyle Hall landed yet another lunker bass from Texas’ O.H. Ivie Lake on Jan. 29. The 13.58-pound largemouth was submitted to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s ShareLunker program, which collects huge bass (13-plus-pounders) caught by anglers between Jan. 1 and the end of March, spawns them in a hatchery, and stocks their offspring in water bodies throughout the state. With all the giants being pulled from O.H. Ivie recently, the lake is a major contributor to the program.
Hall’s fish is the fourth Legacy Class ShareLunker caught in Texas so far this season. All four of those bass have come from O.H Ivie Lake. It also gives the 24-year-old angler the rare distinction of contributing ShareLunker bass in back-to-back years, according to a TPWD press release. The 16.1-pound largemouth that he caught from O.H. Ivie last March was one of the three biggest fish submitted to TPWD in 2022. Hall, who lives in Granbury, returned to the lake this winter and his persistence paid off on the last day of his trip.
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“It’s pretty unreal to get a ShareLunker in back-to-back seasons,” Hall told TPWD last week. “I have spent a lot of time out on the lake the last three weeks and really wanted another Lunker. The last couple of days were slow but I finally got one to bite.”
Hall explained that he was using Garmin LiveScope to target structure edges in roughly 40 feet of water that day. He was fishing over a large hump on the lake bottom when he finally got the bite he was after.
“There was a whole school of 9- to 11-pound fish that came up following the swim jig I was throwing,” said Hall. “They probably followed the bait for 30–45 seconds. From out of nowhere, the fish came off the bottom, flew past the other fish and ate it.”
Hall’s continued success on O.H. Ivie is also a testament to the quality of fishing on the 20,000-acre reservoir, which lies an hour east of San Angelo. According to TPWD, the lake has given up more than two dozen 13-plus-pound largemouth bass over the last two years. This includes the 17.06-pound largemouth that was caught there in 2022, which was the biggest bass caught in Texas in the last 30 years and the seventh-largest largemouth bass ever verified in the state.
“O.H. Ivie continues to produce Lunker after Lunker, and this year is no exception,” said Natalie Goldstrohm, who coordinates the ShareLunker program. “Even pro anglers like Kyle are drawn to fish O.H. Ivie because of the quality bass fishery.”