All lakes go through a natural aging process. We are seeing the New Lake Effect from Ivie right now. Add that to pure Fla fingerlings stocked 10-12 years ago and you have a recipe for giants.

It takes a lot more than just good genetics tho. Water chemistry is HUGE. If you don't have the right water chemistry then you don't have the plankton to support the shad & baby bluegills. Without those you don't grow giant bass. The best genes in the world won't grow a 17# bass if they have no groceries. Fat ladies don't get fat eating celery stix.

I am in the water business so I know a thing or 2 about water chemistry. Many of us have wade-fished and smelled the rotten egg smell from the lake bottom as we pulled our feet out of the mud. That is hydrogen sulfide. Decomposition of plants, trees, and dead critters over the years creates sludge. Sludge creates anaerobic bacteria, which produces hydrogen sulfide.

Sludge needs oxygen to decompose. When the sludge uses oxygen from the pond or lake, it takes away the oxygen levels necessary for fish survival.

Hydrogen sulfide also causes the pH near the bottom of the lake to be depressed very low. Low enough that it won't support plant life and no plankton.

Here's the equation: No Oxygen = No plant life = No plankton = No babies fishes = No Big Fishes

When the lake level at Ivie came up 20 feet it flooded thousands of acres of new plants & trees. It was like fertilizing your yard. Everything in the lake begins to flourish.

So the lesson we are seeing at Ivie right now is: Good Oxygen + Good Plankton + Good Baitfish Population + Good Genes = Giants

Spot on.....

And that same logic is why I am really excited to see what Bois d’Arc Lake does in a few years. I've never had the opportunity to fish a newly formed lake like you did at Fork.

stars definitely still gotta align to pump out what that lakes done....its been over a damn year and it aint letting up with that 17 just being caught! Super bummed I didnt make it out this winter, cuz that lake is magical right now!

I think that's pretty spot on, throw in a lack of pressure in the past

Exactly!

And I will add this. Like it or not FFS has opened up a whole new technique to catch those big prespawn bass on all lakes. Even with the stars aligning on Ivie I feel there would only be maybe 10% of the giants landed that we've been seeing from the lake.

it helps that it is in the middle of nowhere it probly wouldnt be as good as it is if it was as close to a metro area .

And if the water level goes back down it will go the way of Amistad.

Although most people didn’t factor in the LiveScope effect, it was fairly predictable that fishing would be great out there. This isn’t the first time that Ivie has produced big fish. Pretty sure that several SALs were caught within a few years of the lake filling, then as the water dropped entries kinda stopped. Water got high again and it seems like 2008-2012 kicked out numerous SALs, including a 16+ that stood as the lake record until last year. I think the water steadily dropped until the lake was around 10% full, then maybe got back up to 70% or so 4 years ago. At 10%, it pretty well looked like a river. Concho Park was nowhere close to water, couldn’t get past the pump house in the Colorado unless you broke the law and drove under it, and not much shoreline cover. When the lake came back up, I was pretty amazed by all the baitfish around all the flooded bushes. I’ve never seen that many baitfish in any lake I’ve been on. And it isn’t hard to tell by looking that these fish gorge themselves. Even the small fish are footballs. Of course the last time it was hot out there, social media was fairly new and news of a tee er being caught didn’t spread like wildfire. What is baffling in the appearance of these giant meanmouth. Although I never caught any big smallmouth out there, I did catch a few every once in a while. No big ones. But they were smallmouth, not hybrids. I’m by no means an expert or fisheries biologist, but I suspect that with the lake being so low and barely any traditional largemouth spawning cover, the two species shared the same spawning areas. Might be way off, but I’d like to hear a reason. Those meanmouth are really impressive. The Brazos below Whitney has largemouth, smallmouth, and spots. I’ve caught some different hybrid combinations of all 3, but they’re rarely over a pound or two. The next couple of years may even be better as the water drops and compresses the fish into a smaller area.

That region of Texas also has a more moderate climate (almost 2K above sea level and far away from concrete/pollution heat caps). Ivie has good current and oxygenation (two rivers + west Texas wind) and has good steep depth for bass to adjust to variables with little effort/energy expenditure.

Good water clarity, rock, trees, shrubs, and vegetation including hydrilla—has everything for baitfish and bass fry to thrive.

That region of Texas is close to the horizontal latitude that George Perry caught his alleged world record

There are other lakes with similar characteristics in Texas, but are either closer to civilization or were stocked with more white bass and/or stripers.

I wish you would have Tom. In the late-80's and early 90's it was off the chain good. The difference in Fork back then and Ivie now is that everybody was catching big numbers of quality fish as well as giants. It wasn't juts a few guys catching giants back then at Fork.

Anybody that could fish worth a hoot would show up and catch 4-7 pounders in good numbers. The guys that knew how to fish killed them 90% of the time. It was pretty common for the guides to catch 100# of bass off one spot, and then you went to lunch!

Yup same reason choke and falcon produce unreal fishing after being low once they come up. Same for Rayburn, this is the first year since 2012 that Rayburn won't have high water during the spawn. Creates an amazing fishery, fry survival, forage survival etc. Lose the water, lose the fish

Ken A. Is right about the late 80s on Fork, the first time I fished it was out of a 14’ John boat, no electronics and I caught 33 fish over 4 pounds that day, nothing over 7 but broke off several bigguns. Man I miss those days!

It finally has some water and folks are catching those suspended fish using live scope

It’s always had giants, the locals did a pretty good job keeping it quiet. YouTube has blown it off the radar.

Now we are sight fishing with electronics !! They can't hide which is cool but also kinda of sad at the same time. IMHP