VOSS, Texas — Peace, patience and precision.
"Fishing is just a relaxing time just to get out outside, get away from the noise," said Lynn Wright, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Inland Fisheries Division District Fisheries Supervisor.
It’s a chance to reel in that calm ocean ambiance, as well as a fish or two.
And this lake, about 175 miles away from Midland-Odessa, is one of the most ideal places to cast a fishing line.
"Over the last four years, this has been the best trophy bass lake in the United States," Wright said. "And has just drawn a ton of attention for the trophy bass that have come out of here."
The O.H. Ivie Lake, about 55 miles east of San Angelo, is a reservoir formed in 1990 on the Colorado and Concho Rivers.
"This reservoir was built as a water supply reservoir and of course in West Texas, we're very arid," Wright said. "We go through a lot of dry years and we occasionally have a wet year or two. And so this reservoir really fluctuates quite a bit."
While playing a crucial role in the Permian Basin's water supply, this lake doubles as a place fishermen can go to add to their trophy case.
"The opportunity to catch a trophy fish has really drawn people in from all over," Wright said. "We've had people from all over the country and from people outside the country have come here to fish for these trophy bass because this is kind of a unique opportunity, so to speak, to get one of these very large fish. You just can't get them anywhere and over the last four years this has been the place to get them."
It’s so much of a hot spot for these prizes, Wright says it’s one of the leading lakes for a reeling program Texas Parks and Wildlife provides.
"So the ShareLunker Program is this really unique program," Wright said. "It's unique to Texas. [...] A fisherman who catches a 13-plus pound fish from January through March can actually donate that fish to Texas Parks and Wildlife and we’ll include that fish in our selective breed program. Obviously a 13-pound bass is a large bass. It's got the right type of genetics that we want to proliferate and spread around, and so we take that fish, we pair it up and we stock those offspring out in lakes to try to get those trophy genetics into our lakes that grow larger, fish that anglers want to catch."
And let’s just say this is a lake anglers sail to.
"So over the last four years, we've had 51 what we call 'legacy classes'," Wright said. "Those are fish that were donated to our spawning program. And if you think about just this most recent year in 2024 and the whole state of Texas, we had 19 ShareLunkers entered from that January to March time period and of those 19, 12 came out of this reservoir. So far, more than half of them."
Wright says one of the reasons behind this is because there’s larger than life genetics in this huge body of water; big fish in a big pond.
"This lake is also like that fluctuates a lot," Wright said. "And back in 2018 this lake came up over 30 feet when we had a really wet year. That really just expanded the habitat and provided an environment in which those fish could really just grow unlimited. And so, an expansion of the lake really created that perfect storm. So those fish could grow."
So if fishing floats your boat, you might have to cruise to Lake O.H. Ivie.
A place where those trophy sized bass will certainly fall for your hook, line and sinker.
If interested in participating in the ShareLunker program, download the ShareLunker app or visit their website.