Granbury’s Kyle Hall caught this 15.82-pound Toyota ShareLunker during the 2024 season making him the first person to donate a 13-pound and larger bass in three consecutive years. (TPWD/Courtesy)

When the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s Toyota ShareLunker program starts its new season for Legacy Lunkers on Jan. 1, all eyes will be to the west on O.H. Ivie Lake.

The 19,000-acre lake on the Colorado and Concho rivers south of San Angelo has become the hotbed of the program in recent years, and has a total of 51 entries over the last four years.

Once a lake that was best known for its yo-yoing water levels, Ivie has become a mecca for big bass fishermen in the winter and early spring with the proliferation of forward-facing sonar. Using their electronics allows the fishermen to locate big fish in the relatively clear water lake, then work them as long as it takes to get a strike.

During the 2024 ShareLunker season fishermen donated 19 13-pound and larger bass to the program, with 12 coming from Ivie. The previous year the lake produced 15 entries.

Seven lakes produced ShareLunkers in 2024 — Fort Phantom Hill, Inks Lake, J.B. Thomas, Naconiche, Ivie, Sam Rayburn, Toledo Bend —, with three (Fort Phantom Hill, Inks Lake, J.B. Thomas) joining the list for the first time.

Missing from the program for the last two season is Lake Fork, which historically has 263 of the program’s 669 all-time entries.

I have never understood the objections to the ShareLunker program over the years. Yes, the bass are removed from the local lake for one breeding cycle, but that lake has always received offspring of the recent entries spawned at the Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center in Athens. Then there is the enhancement of the hatchery system’s broodfish to ShareLunker offspring, not to mention the scientific data ranging from handling of big fish to DNA information on Texas’ bass.

Something seems to work because name any other state that has 78 lakes that have produced a 13-pound or larger bass. They have come from a diversity of lakes from tiny Lake Coleman at 2,000 acres on a good day to the state’s biggest, Toledo Bend.

“In 2024, 11 fish spawned and produced about 210,000 fingerlings. There were 190,000 fingerlings stocked into participating reservoirs and 20,000 were held for future broodstock for the hatchery use,” explained Natalie Goldstrohm, ShareLunker program coordinator.

While the program has become heavy with O.H. Ivie entries the last few years, the science side of the equation has meant that is not an issue as far as bass for the hatchery system is concerned.

“We have not seen any concerns from a genetics standpoint with having O.H. Ivie producing most of the Legacy Class ShareLunkers. Each season, the DNA of the Legacy Class ShareLunkers is tested and while there are some genetic connections, many are not related. As more fish get shared with the program, we may be able to make additional connections, but the genetic pool seems diverse at O.H. Ivie,” Goldstrohm explained.

She said there is an advantage to having as many lakes involved as possible.

“However, if Legacy Class Lunkers do come from more locations, it helps promote the program in different areas of Texas and could encourage more folks to target lunker sized bass throughout the state,” she said.

In the earliest years of the program no one was certain what the focus of the program was beyond promotion of Texas’ emerging quality bass fishing because no one had ever brought a bass that large from the wild into captivity. Through trial and error, department technicians and biologists not only learned how to handle and maintain the fish, but how to successfully spawn them.

Without the benefit of DNA, fingerlings were held back with ShareLunker females eventually paired with ShareLunker males for continued use as hatchery broodstock to produce fingerlings for statewide stocking.

Over the years the process was fine-tuned with the ShareLunker season shortened to January through March because it was determined bass collected in that time frame were more likely to spawn indoors than those collected between October and December, which initially was included in the ShareLunker year.

The ability to use the fishes’ DNA allowed the department to improve the genetic diversity of the hatchery broodfish to the point all bass all are now ShareLunker offspring known as Lone Star Bass.

While Lone Star Bass have been used to supplement populations in lakes statewide, they are the only bass stocked into Bois d’Arc Lake which opened in Fannin County last year. Prior to its opening the lake was stocked with 373,859 pure Florida largemouth bass that are Lone Star Bass.

“We have analyzed the scale sample from a Bass Pro Shops Lunker Class bass (8- to 10-pound), catch 4299, an 8.15-pound fish from Bois d‘Arc in May. That catch had 100 percent Florida largemouth bass alleles, meaning it was a pure Florida largemouth bass. Catch 4299 was spawned in a TPWD facility, and is the offspring of ShareLunker No. 577, a 14.57-pound fish from Marine Creek Lake caught on January 26, 2019.

“That would make catch 4299 about 5.1 years old at the time it was caught. As a side note, SL-0577 was previously identified as the offspring of SL No. 410, a 14.49-pound fish from Lake Conroe caught on March 22, 2006,” Goldstrohm said.

In recent years the ShareLunker program was expanded to include information on Bass Pro Shop Lunker Class, Strike King Lunker Elite (10- to 13-pounds) and Lew’s Legend Class (13 and up) bass. The difference between those and the Legacy Class is that none of these are collected by the department. Instead, fishermen are asked to send in data on their catch year-round, including a scale for DNA sampling.

In 2024 there were 617 entries in the three categories.

Fishermen participating in this portion of the program will receive a Catch Kit corresponding to their fish’s weight class. Each Catch Kit includes an achievement decal, merchandise and other giveaways. They will also be entered into a drawing to win a $5,000 shopping spree and other prizes.

Fishermen who catch a bass big enough to enter the Legacy program are asked to immediately call (903) 681-0550.

For more information on all parts of the ShareLunker program, go online to https://texassharelunker.com.