Well my father-in-law heads back to Taiwan in 2 weeks and this Sat & Sun is our last chance to get the BIG ONE

Fixed the stuff we broke last time, prepped the gear .. now like always where to start on the big lake. Lots of hints about going to a new pattern / places "major relocations" etc in recent posts ??

So any hints or thoughts on where to go ?

If not odds are we are going to start outside little mineral and follow the river channel looking for that huge fish in 81 FOW ..

Best of Luck to all and hope everyone has a great & safe holiday weekend.

-rob

It's a hunt...good luck and may the nomad striper find your boat

I have no idea what this rain will do to the bite Sat , but yes I am expecting to end up trolling alot trying to find them.

Unless I get any new info, the plan maybe to put in at the DAM and check the rip rap for topwater, then zig-zag my way up the east shoreline to table top.

-rob

How did the day go for you guys! We'll be out in the morning to try our luck.

Well I would have probably whined about today's fishing, but when we went in for a lunch break; we saw a beached bass boat and no motor. 4 guys in waist deep water trying to lift the motor up from the bottom of the lake. Looks like the transom rotted out and the whole motor fell off.

So all things considered we had a great day on lake Texoma.

Morning was slow, worked little mineral south, pump station and coves south .. never marked much .. got to Dam, saw some guides getting lots of box fish on bait. We couldn't give away our shiners, no takers on slabs either.

Late afternoon had some box fish on the south ledge of table top. Then we went over to West Burns runs and the screen blacked out with fish. I could not believe it, right in front of the beach. Tons of boats, jetski going thru, but still shad balls everywhere. I remembered another report about finding them out front of the beach, or we would have never tried in the middle of all that commotion.

Trolling was too easy, so we slabbed up a bunch on MT Pockets prune pickers. We changed all sizes of slabs and colors, but only small fish, so we moved on. I bet a guy could have limited in 30 mins. After that not much action by the dam or coves.

Sky got dark around 7pm ish and that weird cool wind started, so we fired up the mighty F20 and scooted back in. Got in just before the big wind and some lightning showed up.

Rolled the dice on a cheap room at the Sherman Super 8 .. I would recommend it, older but updated, clean and a good value for someplace just to get 6 hrs of sleep, before we try again

It was a Good day on the water.

-rob

Good to hear that you finally got some luck on Texoma. I'm going to head up there in two weeks and try some bank fishing and see how that goes. If i remember correctly, Mid September is when the action picks up.

Top water action should be starting soon. Glad you got your dad into some fish Rob.

Glad the plan worked for you.

I'm pretty sure I saw y'all out at table top. We run that 24' Grady White that stayed on the top all day. We only pecked at them but came away with 16 total fish, all overs except three. The overs were all decent fish but not the double digit fish we have been catching. I'm thinking the fish may have move a little. Gonna try again this week to see if I can find them.

Hi CaptJohn,

That was us, I thought that might be you. Nice boat, looks like you were having fun, I saw you get one on table top and then I thought you headed south. We worked that ridge line and then went over a few humps. I probably should have moved around more. We got a few and we would circle back or change out the rigs with larger or smaller jigs, trying to see if size mattered. I think we may have spent to much time doing that. I always wondered if maybe change this up, run slower or deeper, bigger bait would find that BIG Striper

Same over at Burns Run, although there we did see a pontoon boat net a good size fish, so we kept working the area. We got good solid fish, but nothing over 30" or 5 lbs again.

We trolled 2.5 to 3.5 mph .. sometimes less .. and would weave a bit ..

ANY THOUGHTS if our speed was wrong ?

Speed sounds about right to me. My boat idles at about 2.7-3.1 mph so that where I usually stay. Our best was on a red/white roadrunner. With a grub trailer. May try that. Also ran downriggers at 25' wint #14 pet spoons. That did ok too. But to us, Saturday was tough.

Thanks CaptJohn .. White ice twisty tails did better for us, than more realistic shad looking paddle tails. I switched out the shad paddletails with chart/green grubs with a long tail and they did better. But the best was the white/silver spec colors as well for us.