Wild, Wild West

We’re on the heels of what turned out to be a fairy tale December for big bass catching at Lake O.H. Ivie. It’s downright spooky to think what the next three months might bring for the Texas Parks and Wildlife’s Toyota ShareLunker program, which launched its 37th collection season on January 1.

The West Texas reservoir has a history of catching fire with whopper bass in January and February, A pair of out-of-state anglers — Josh Jones and Dalton Smith — struck the match a month early this time around.

Records were likely set along the way, too.

Five Fish: 61.37 pounds

Jones scored first, about two weeks before Christmas. An Oklahoma resident, Jones has become a fixture at O.H. Ivie over the last two winters and reeled more giants there than anyone. He charges $2,000 per day for January/February instructional guide trips, In Spring 2022, Jones became the first angler in the history of the ShareLunker program to catch four Legacy-class fish over 13 pounds during the designated spawning season that runs Jan. 1 to March 31. It took him only two lunker seasons to do it. Five other anglers have three Legacy fish.

Jones was up to his old tricks on December 15. Fishing alone, the angler had what he recalled as a “historic day for himself and for bass fishing in general.” He claims he caught 40 bass, and 31 of them were whoppers.

Included in the mix were two fish over 13 pounds, four between 1012 pounds, 11 over nine pounds and 14 over eight pounds. All of them bit a 3/8 ounce white 6th Sense Braid swim jig rigged on 22 pound fluorocarbon line. Jones said he lost another fish he estimates weighed upwards of 14 pounds.

The five largest bass weighed 61.37 pounds on Jones’ digital scales, all recorded on an action camera. He called it the heaviest five-fish catch from a public lake ever recorded cast-tocatch on video. Most were caught between 8 a.m. and 1 p.m.

In February 2021, You-Tuber Ben Milliken and his fishing partner, Joe McKay, recorded a five-fish catch totaling 60 pounds, also at O.H. Ivie. The heaviest of that group was a 16.40 pounder that currently ranks No. 17 among Texas Top 50 biggest bass of alltime.

A master with forward- facing sonar, Jones normally relies on his electronics to target specific fish he can see on his Lowrance electronics screen. If he doesn’t see a big one, he doesn’t cast.

Things were strangely different that day, Jones said. The area was swarming with fish and they were on the move, just a few feet off bottom.

Rather than casting to individual fish, Jones said he made repeated casts to a sweet spot about the size of a pick-up, watched his jig sink and hoped for the best as he retrieved the bait slowly back to the boat. He described the spot as a featureless flat in 25 feet of water near a river channel drop off.

“Probably 99 times out of 100 I’m going to see a fish and throw at it,” Jones said. “But that’s not what happened in this deal. I was blind casting and watching my lure. They were coming out of nowhere. It was one of those magical things, one of those meant to be kind of deals.”

Interestingly, Jones said he went back to the spot the next day and only caught two fish. The next day, he never caught a bass.

“It’s the first time I’ve ever fished that lake and not caught a fish,” he said.

Go West Young Man

Dalton Smith is a parttime fishing guide and fishing coach at Campbellsville University in Kentucky who has dreamed of going gunning for an O.H Ivie giant ever since the magical drums started thumping out West two years ago. He made the 15-hour journey just ahead of the New Year and witnessed some serious big bass nirvana of his own.

On December 30, Smith landed two big bass weighing 14.69 and 14.26 pounds less than three hours apart. If someone has ever pulled off such a feat on a public lake before, I haven’t heard about it.

There’s a great story behind the big bass beat down. It started shortly before noon, when Smith and his fishing parter, Cole Logsdon, were fishing along an underwater ditch in about 20-30 feet of water. The anglers spotted what looked to be a large bass with their forward facing sonar, about 60 feet from the boat.

Smith, 24, fooled the bass with a 2.7 inch 6th Sense swim bait rigged on a 3/8-ounce jig head. A finesse fishing specialist, Smith was using a spinning rod rigged with 15-pound best braided main line connected to an 8-pound test fluorocarbon leader. Horsing the big fish with such light tackle wasn’t an option.

The angler said he had been playing the bass for several minutes when it made a hard run towards a tree. Then things got dicey.

“She got me wrapped up in a limb,” he said. “We could see its white belly, probably six feet below boat.”

Logsdon wasted no time grabbing the landing net. He laid down on his belly and probed for the fish while Smith held his bibs to keep him from falling overboard into the cold water.

“He went in elbow deep and scooped it up,” Smith said. “It was insane out there for a few minutes.”

The anglers raced to shore and weighed the fish at 14.69 pounds on certified scales, then videoed the release before heading back to the magical area three hours later. Amazingly, Smith caught the second 14 pounder less than five minutes after they dropped the trolling motor.

“That first one was special and the second one I was like, what the heck. It was crazy,” he said.

Life-changing might be a better way to describe Smith’s first-ever trip to Texas. Not long after returning home, he decided to quit his job at the college and move his guide business from Dale Hollow Lake on the Kentucky/ Tennessee border more than 1,000 miles to his new favorite lake in Texas. He made the move less than a week later.

An aspiring tournament angler, Smith says the decision was an easy one.

“I had a couple of interesting phone calls on the way home that led me to start thinking about it,” he said. “The more I thought about it, the better it sounded. I’m young. I’m single. And I fish everyday already. It just made sense for me to go live on the best bass fishing lake in the nation and Let the big bass wars begin.

Matt Williams is a freelance writer based on Nacogdoches. He can be reached by e-mail, mattwillwrite4u@ yahoo.com