Posted: Tue, 10 May 2011 04:27 PM - 11,147 Readers
By: Shannon Thompkins
Three of Texas' 200 or so public reservoirs have over the past six months made solid cases that they currently are the best waters in the state for anglers looking to catch monster-size largemouth bass.
And as hard as it might be for many Texas bass anglers to accept, none of the trio is in reservoir-rich East Texas, long home of the state's top big-bass fisheries and traditional heart of bass fishing interest among Texans.
The three lakes — Falcon on the Rio Grande, O.H. Ivie on the Concho and Colorado rivers near San Angelo, and Lake Austin on the Colorado River in the city whose name the lake shares - accounted for 16 of the 19 13-pound-plus largemouth bass entered in the recently concluded 2010-11 season of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department's ShareLunker program.
Results from the 25th season of the ShareLunker program, which from Oct. 1 through April 30 each year solicits angler donation of live, 13-pound-plus largemouths for use in the state's fisheries research and hatchery production, give insight into when and where and how some of the biggest bass in Texas were taken over the past six months.
With Texas' annual big-bass season having wound down with the end of the fishes' spring spawning effort (when female bass are at their heaviest and most vulnerable to anglers), here's a review of what proved to be an interesting winter and spring for Texas' million-plus bass anglers:
O.H. Ivie Reservoir solidified its growing reputation as a monster largemouth producer, coughing up seven of the 19 fish entered in the 2010-11 ShareLunker program.
Those seven fish pushed Ivie, impounded in 1990, into a tie with legendary Sam Rayburn Reservoir for third place in production of ShareLunker entries. Both lakes have seen 23 13-pound-plus largemouths donated to the program, but 18 of Ivie's entries have come in the last two seasons.
Ivie produced this season's first entry - a 14-pounder caught Dec. 15 - and final entry - a 14.94-pounder taken April 14.
That 14.94-pounder proved to be a repeat ShareLunker customer. The fish had been caught the year before, when it weighed 16.08 pounds and set a lake record.
The fish was donated to ShareLunker, fit with an internal tag, and released back into the reservoir.
While Ivie produced the most ShareLunker entries, Falcon Reservoir, over the last six months, arguably produced more huge (10-pound-plus) largemouths than any Texas lake.
Falcon's largemouth fishery is en fuego, and this year produced scores of bass weighing more than 10 pounds. It is, quite simply, the hottest big-bass fishery in the nation.
Anglers donated six Falcon-caught bass to the ShareLunker program. But at least a half-dozen and probably more 13-pluses were landed and released by anglers who declined to offer the fish to the program.
One of those fish was the new lake-record largemouth. The fish, which weighed 15.63 pounds, was taken Jan. 7 by Falcon fishing guide Tommy Law. One of Law's customers landed, photographed and released a 13-pounder that day. The five heaviest largemouths they caught weighed a combined 47 pounds, 9 ounces.
A nearby angler used Law's scale to weigh a fish he'd taken. It weighed 12 pounds, 14 ounces.
Falcon's fantastic fishery almost certainly would have made an even bigger splash if the very real danger of fishing the Mexican side of the lake and chancing a run-in with drug cartel thugs hadn't kept so many anglers away from the border-straddling reservoir.
Lake Austin was the biggest big-bass surprise of the year.
A smallish lake with less than 2,000 surface acres, Lake Austin is a narrow, 21-mile-long swollen channel of the Colorado River on the west side of the capitol city. But its blossoming big-bass fishery is making big impressions.
Lake Austin yielded three ShareLunker entries this season, topped by a lake-record 16.03-pounder that ranks as the 23rd heaviest largemouth documented taken in Texas water.
Austin produced dozens of 7-to-12-pound largemouths this winter and spring, and it doesn't seem ready to quit. This past Wednesday, a pair of anglers fishing an evening tournament checked a five-bass stringer weighing 36 pounds, 2 ounces, topped by an 11.9-pounder.
Lake Fork is the most productive trophy-bass lake in Texas history.
Fork has accounted for 247 of the 523 ShareLunker entries and remains a tremendous bass fishery. But it isn't kicking out 13-pluses like it did in its wonder years of the 1990s.
This year, Fork's single ShareLunker entry, a 14.25-pounder, marked the lake's lowest contribution in the program's 25-year history.
The heaviest largemouth entered in the 2010-11 ShareLunker season was a 16.07-pounder caught from Caddo Lake.
In a repeat of what happened on O.H. Ivie, that big Caddo bass proved to be a previous ShareLunker entry. The fish had been caught the year before, when it weighed 16.17 pounds and set the Caddo water-body record. It was released back into the lake after being fit with an internal tag that TPWD staff used to identify it as a previous "participant."
