On March 31, Oklahoma fishing buddies Cullie Beveal and Jonathan High made the six-hour drive to O.H. Ivie Lake east of San Angelo, Texas. They had booked a two-day trip with Kyle Hall, and their expectations were high. A noted bass guide and tournament fisherman, Hall is one a few local anglers who has helped build O.H. Ivie’s reputation in recent years as one of the top trophy largemouth lakes in the South.
“I fished the lake with Kyle last year and caught my best bass, weighing 10.5 pounds,” Beveal tells Outdoor Life. “My goal this year was to catch a bass bigger than that one.”
The two Sooner State anglers hit the water with Hall early on April 1. But tough conditions made the action slow.
“It was brutal, with winds to 40 mph, making our fishing really difficult,” says Beveal, 26. “We used ‘LiveScope’ to search for big bedding bass in 6 to 8 feet of water. We found some bass but [they] weren’t interested.”
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The following morning, April 2, the wind was still blowing, but the anglers were determined to keep hunting for big fish using Hall’s forward-facing sonar. They found one bass on a nest that Hall believed was about 8-pounds. But the fish wouldn’t bite.
Just after noon, they located another, bigger bass on the FFS. Beveal cast a swim bait to the fish — he was using a 6th Sense Panorama 6.5 in the bluegill color. His first cast was off the mark a bit, so he reeled in and made a second cast to the fish that was now just 15 feet from their boat.
His second cast landed just beyond the bass. He worked his bait toward the largemouth and let it sink.
“I saw the lure on sonar land near the bed,” Beveal explains. “The fish was agitated and went nose down toward the lure. I knew the bass was going to take the swimbait, and a second later I set the hook into what felt like a brick wall.”
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Beveal couldn’t believe the power of the bass at first. It was a different kind of pull, and Hall yelled for him to fight the fish harder. Beveal worked it in quickly toward Hall’s landing net.
“Kyle netted the fish and put it on the deck. And none of us said anything for a few seconds … We were in awe.”
Hall pulled out the digital hand scale he had, which showed a weight of more than 16 pounds.
“I told Kyle and Jonathan, ‘No way.’ There was just no chance of that fish weighing that much,” says Beveal. “We put the fish in the live well, and then we headed to Elm Creek Marina where we launched that morning because they had a certified scale.”
At Elm Creek the egg-laden female bass officially weighed 16.39 pounds. It measured 27.75 inches long, with a massive, 22-inch girth. It’s the 20th largest bass ever caught in Texas, according to Texas Parks and Wildlife, and the largest weighed this year by state fisheries biologists.
Kyle made a call to TPWD right away to tell them about the bass they’d caught.
“The state’s Legacy ShareLunker program for the spring spawn had just ended, and Kyle wanted to know if they still wanted the fish for their stocking program,” Beveal saus. “They said, ‘Absolutely,’ and they had a crew there with a transport tank to take the fish in just 30 minutes.”
Beveal’s bass is now in a large aquarium at the Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center in Athens. Spawn from the fish will be used in the state’s ShareLunker Program, a remarkably effective breeding and stocking program where anglers can submit trophy bass to TPWD during the early spring. Those bass are then spawned in the Fisheries Center, and their progeny released into O.H. Ivie and other Texas lakes.
“My bass was very alive and healthy when we gave to the state folks,” Beveal said. “I’ll have a replica mount made of the bass to always remember that fishing day. I’m just glad I didn’t catch it the day before, which was April Fool’s Day. No one ever would have believed me.”
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