Finally things seem to be getting back to normal for this time of year. I've been catching lots of nice stripers the past 2 days and seeing the fish in patterns that you would expect to see for May. Lake Texoma water temperature is 67 and the elevation is about 3 ft. below normal for this time of year. All but a few of the larger fish now seemed to have spawned and returned to the main lake in large schools of hungry fish, and they are now skinny like they normally are when returning from the spawn. These fish are as fat as they can be and are eager to fill the extra room in their bellies after dumping their eggs.
The fish still have not settled into a predictable pattern but when you find them it is on and all the rods go down. They are still not staying long, you might catch 10 -20 fish and they are gone but it is fun when it lasts. We've been catching fish in 1/2 foot to 60 feet of water and everywhere in between using lures early and late and bait during the day. We were catching small fish in the cold on Saturday but we brought home 62. Sunday's trip canceled when I told them they might be catching small fish in the cold. Then on Monday, things get interesting.
Micah fishing Sunday evening
Monday morning, May 16, I had a group of 3 and start out the trip to discover that a connection to my graph has gone bad, apparently over night. After checking all the connections I still can't seem to find it so away we go, I can work on it while we fish. We start out with lures with a little luck and I finally get a tip about some nice fish. We head over and I decide there must be fish under us so we start up a drift and catch a couple of nice fish but it's slow. Then on the third attempt at instinctively stopping on top of fish without a graph, I'm blessed with some results. Rods start going down 2 and 3 at a time and we're loading the boat with nice fat 18-20" stripers. I'm not sure how deep we were but I think we were in about 20-30 ft. Finally when we only have 3 left to catch, I find and fix the connection with the graph which ended up being a corroded fuse connection. We made one more drift and put the last 3 and the box then head back to catch catfish at the dock with a box of fish that is better than any I've had in the past month using my graph. At this point I'm ready to just turn my graph off for the evening trip.
As it turns out, I wouldn't even need my graph for the evening trip. As I was heading out, Micah told me he had just killed them on cohoes, a soft plastic swim bait, in 10-15 ft. of water. We go throw anchor and drop down bait while I get the lure rods rigged up with cohoes and after 20 minutes with no bites, I have to go check it out. We start out with a couple of small fish but then we get into them and they are all nice fish. They continued to bite all evening long and we even managed to bring in an 8 pounder in which we released. We came around 7:00 with our 40 fish limit.
Tuesday was a little slower than on Monday but still great fishing. We started out with lures fishing in the spawning shad with limited success, then we had to do a little searching around, as they had apparently moved from their location the previous morning. After several stops, we hit the jack pot. I was on anchor in 35 ft. on a ledge fishing live bait. The fish were stacked up like what you would expect to see for May, just a solid wall of fish from 10 ft. to the bottom. They wouldn't stay under us long but I would beat the water and they would keep coming back through and we would catch 4-5 fish before they would leave again. They finally left us completely and I never could make anymore fish bite so we headed in with 29 stripers including all of our overs and a crappie on a 4 person trip.
I can't tell you how grateful I am to be catching good fish again and see things start to settle back to normal. It looks like we might have a few trophy fish left in the lake as there was an 18 pounder caught and weighed in on Monday so I'm anticipating on catching one or more of these behemoths in the coming months. We did lose a lot of the trophy fish to the heat last year but the fish that are left are fatter than ever with the abundant food. After seeing what I saw the past 2 days, I'm optimistic about catching some. I have several evening trips available as well as a morning here and there. You can book your trip online at www.stripersinc.com. If I'm booked, Micah or Mark will be available so give me a call at (903)815-1609 and I'll get you set up.
Your Lake Texoma striper fishing guide,
Brian Prichard
Stripers Inc.
www.stripersinc.com
(903)815-1609