I decided to give Texoma a break and go fish Possum Kingdom over the memorial day weekend. The lake was a zoo, but I'm sure things were similar all over the state. We had our friend Ron and Paula over for the Holiday and wanted to see if we could get them on some stripers.
Things started out with a bang right off as we caught one of last years striper stocking. I'm catching lots of these 12 inch stripers now at PK, so the future is looking really good.
The lake was rough and it always looked like rain so my wife passed on the boat trip.
We took the little striper as a sign fishing would be good despite the fact it started to rain. Once we reached magic point (Secret Striper Hotspot) one of the poles we were trolling bent double and drag started screaming out like we had hooked an underwater wild pig.
Turns out that pole was one I had set up with special with the three swivels I use. This rig had two Powerbait Red Eye Shad followed by a big Bomber Fat Free shad all on a 30 Lb test mono leader. I've been having problems with this rig with break offs and wanted to try and see if I could fix the problem by ditching the 20 lb flourocarbon and using really heavy mono. Turns out we had three stripers on at the same time and they roughed up the mono so bad it broke at the second swivel. Ron had one striper on for a short time then he bent the hook on the red eye and was gone.
We kept fishing though and soon Ron caught his first striper.
(Ron caught a lot of grief for that Longhorn hat at PK.).
We added a second one using a modified umbrella rig with a 6 inch wire leader and a deep diving crank bait hooked to the center arm that allowed us to get deeper. We had three stripers on this rig as well but instead of breaking the line, they bent the hooks. This caused me to have to change out the cheap cabelas hooks I had been using with some Lucky Strike Gamakatsu's that they could not bend.
We kept at it and soon had another one on. Things were looking good. We marked lots of schools of what I assumed to be stripers along with massive schools of bait fish. PK may have been the dead sea at one time but it's really good fishing now.
Being on PK during Memorial Day weekend was like being in a small pool with a bunch of fat boys doing cannonballs. But we were catching fish and just trolled right through a swirling melee of wake borders and jet Fleas. But we kept catching stripers.
These umbrella rigs generate a lot of tangles. I spent a lot of time dealing with the line wrapping around the arms. four swim baits and two trebles makes it difficult to remove from the net as well.
We finally got rained off the lake. Can't complain about the rain with this drought. We really got an excellent soaking rain. Nothing like the flood of 08 when most of these stripers were born. I assume all these 25-30 inch fish we are catching were spawned in 08 by the few remaining fish that made it through the golden algae. Once in a while I hear of someone catching one of these older fish that go 17-20 LB now. I personally have not seen these fish but I assume they are rare. The stripers the size we are catching now are not rare.
I found the key to keeping the sand bass off our bait was to up size everything. We still caught a few sandies but nothing like earlier in the year. I tried a new product this time called Powerbait ripple shad in Glow Chartreuse. Worked like a champ. Can't wait to try it at Texoma.
My friend Ron had a great time catching his first striper. He ended with three nice ones.
Biggest one was 28 inches and almost 10 LB.
Got some friends with kids coming later this summer. Cannot wait to see the look on their face when they get one of these things on the line.
Hope everyone had a super Holiday.
