Bass angler James Maupin of Cypress was doing some social distancing at Lake O.H. Ivie on the afternoon of March 29 when he got up close and personal with a bass that had a serious weight problem.
The fish weighed 13.15 pounds on certified scales at Concho Park Marina. Maupin, 35, subsequently put the big West Texas bass on loan to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s Toyota ShareLunker program.
There is a good story behind the catch, the 26th Legacy-class ShareLunker produced by the 19,000-acre reservoir since 2000. Maupin’s fish was the fourth and final Legacy class lunker entered statewide during the program’s 2020 spawning phase, which ended March 31.
It was also the only ShareLunker reported during an unprecedented period in time calling for everyone, including fishermen, to stay at least six feet apart from one another.
Interestingly, the angler hadn’t planned to be fishing at O.H. Ivie in the first place. He was supposed to be three hours to the southwest at Lake Amistad. He and his dad, Kerry Maupin of Ruidoso, N.M., have been carrying on a springtime fishing tradition on the Texas-Mexico border lake for more than a decade.
“We’ve been meeting up there for a week to 10 days every spring for the last 12 years. We love that place,” Maupin said. “We were able to fish for one day at Amistad and caught close to 40 fish, but then we heard they were shutting the lake down because of the coronavirus. The lake reopened a couple of days later, but we had already left.”
The anglers didn’t cut their annual fishing trip short. Instead, they hooked up to their boat and headed to the nearest lake with a good reputation — Lake O.H. Ivie.
“Neither of us had been there before, but I’m glad we went,” Maupin recalled. “That lake has moved to my No. 1 spot now. The habitat is incredible. It’s full of flooded brush. The water is clear. I’ll definitely be going back.”
The anglers discovered a particularly good spot on a main lake point on the third day of the trip. The point produced several four pounders, and Maupin lost one estimated to be the 6-7 pound range.
“We decided to stay in that area all day the next day,” he said. “About 2 p.m. we started working our way across a flat toward another point. I flipped a Texas rigged watermelon/red Fluke to the edge of a bush in 7 feet of water. I felt the ‘tick’ about halfway down.”
Maupin set the hook, and the battle was on.
“The wind was gusting and trying to blow us into the brush,” he said. “It was something else getting that fish in the boat before she wrapped me up. It was the best day of fishing I’ve ever had in my life, for sure.”
News of the O.H. Ivie whopper didn’t surprise TPWD fisheries biologist Lynn Wright of San Angelo, who hinted that it might be a sign of more good things to come. Wright says the lake is on a big time rebound following significant rains in 2019 that caused water levels to spike after a long drought. The rising water flooded thousands of acres of new growth mesquites and salt cedars, creating a nutrient-rich playground where piscatorial life is now thriving.
“Three years ago the lake was at about 4,500 acres, and now it’s about 15,000 acres,” he said. “The habitat is through the roof right now. I would expect to see some very strong year classes in the next few years. Young fish are going to survive really well, and there is a ton of food out there. Things are definitely looking good in the future.”
Maupin’s fish was transported to the Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center in Athens, where it joined a 13.28-pound Legacy lunker already in the facility’s lunker bunkers. The 13.28-pounder was caught on March 1 from Lake Alan Henry by Blake Cockrell of Ransom City.
Bass must weigh 13 pounds or more and be caught between Jan. 1 and March 31 to qualify for entry in the Legacy class category. The big females are taken to the TFFC for genetics testing and selective breeding with chosen males.
If all goes well, the eggs are collected, hatched and the mother fish is returned to the lake from which it was caught. Some of the offspring are stocked in public lakes. Others are retained for use in TPWD’s Florida bass hatchery program, if genetics testing confirms the donor fish to have pure Florida genes.
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