What if they installed this slot limit for Lake Texoma and the Red River? Increasing the limit on smaller fish to ten under twenty inches, no take of any stripers between 20-28 inches, and allowing for one trophy fish 28+ in. That would allow anglers to still take many eating size fish, it would protect many spawning females allowing for better breeding stock, there would be a lot more 28+in fish, and it would still allow anglers to take trophy fish for mounting. I think everyone would win if this slot limit was adopted. Once again this is just an idea that I had. Please tell me what you think.

If we're lucky a Biologist will chime in here on this topic or maybe one of the guides up there maybe JD or Chrisc would probably have some ideas.

Guys Im am truely not smart enough to give a logical answer on this. I may have opinions but mine are just like belly buttons.. everyones got one
I have been fortunate
enough to know both the biologist that work Texoma from the Tx side and the okie side and both are very aware of whats going on here.

In my opinion the limits that are now in place have done wonders for this lake over the last 10 years. i remember just 8-10 years ago you could fish for a week and never catch anything over 20 inches. many have thories as to why that was.. most of them revolve around the floods of 1991....

i have seen a huge noticable increase in the overall size of our fish in the last 8 years...now many months of the year its hard to keep a limit of 10 cuz your catching all over 20" rs

I have not thought yet enough about trevors proposal.. but my first instinct would be that it would sway the balance of small vs big fish. Over time (short term) it may increase the numbers of trohpy fish but over the long term would probably hurt since the depletion of smaller box fish based on trevors idea would the decrease the bigger fish....i dunno....i bet many people could argue strongly one way or another.. but my real opinion is that the biologists have set the limit right where it needs
to be to contiue to keep this one of the best striper lake in the country. Some say we will never have a big population of 20+ lb fish due to the warm water temps in the summer months. the lakes that produce numerous 20+lbrs are typically cold water lakes that dont reach the high summer temps we do. that seems to be our only negative in producing lots of 20+ lbrs.
I used to be very torn about catching 30-50 fish everyday and knowing that many many others were catching that many as well. I thought that couldnt be good for the future of the lake.. When I got to know the biologists and talked to them about my concerns, they assured
me that they were aware of the pressure on the lake and that that many fish both box fish and overs needed to be harvested inorder to keep the lake healthy.

man im getting typers cramps

So i guess the bottom line is .. until somone smarter
than me convinces me that another variation of the current limit is best for the future I aggreee with the current limits of 8 unders and 2 overs.

One other thng you have to consider when having a slot and trying to release fish is the mortality rate of stripers....most in the know say its not good even when done properly and especially when done in the hot months

Nicely done, Jeff. You are so correct on the mortality rate concerning the 2 over's; keeping 2 over's allows the angler(s) to determine which ones are more apt to survive the release.

I dont think it is so much the water temps of the lake as it is the stratification of the water in the late summer. Probably the best way to save the big fish in the lake is to build some kind of refuge for them in the summer time such as a big areator or something that would destratify part of the lake. This area would have to be off limits to fishing and would probably not be an affordable option. The other option is to open the flood gates and send them down the river where the stratification problem does not exist.

My two cents. Seems like the Texas and Oklahoma authorities and other organizations like SOG's have done and excellent job of making Texoma a premier striper lake. I think I would trust their judgement and let them make the decisions. I was shocked to learn how much revenue the striper fishing industry on Texoma brings in to the local economy.

Yes some big fish would be nice but the main thing is that we catch fish every day.

If the 1991 floods are truly the cause of the lack of trophy size stripers--how long before it returns to the way it used to be and did the floods last year set us back even farther? Thanks Jason

I know that in the 80's we were catching TONS of BIG fish. That was before cast nets when everyone was using perch or artificials. The flood definitely seemed to affect it, to the untrained eye anyway.

I personally don't think the floods have anything to do with anything. Some people say that the lake loses all the big fish during the floods....hogwash...the fact of the matter is that the real big fish have a real hard time in September and August. They get real skinny and just kinda sadly cruise the surface and don't eat. I do agree that there is a high mortality rate associated with catch and release but circle hooks and an unhooing tool like an ARC dehooker would allow anglers to jaw hook the fish and remove them from the hook without actually touching them. With more females in the twenty inch range with my proposed limit there would be more fish spawning and therefore more box fish. Thanks for the input guys.

The reason why there aren't as many big fish any more could be due to the fact that Texoma is only an hour away from many big cities like Dallas. It has a ton of guides and a ton of weekend warriors. Back in the eightees they didn't have shad tanks...I can imagine they had cast nets back then, but they couldn't keep shad alive and not as many fish were caught.

You are right, there weren't any shad tanks. No one was using them until some Tennessee guys came down for the first big striper tournament. Everyone was using perch and throwing them in coolers with lake water. That and artificials. Everyone saw the results of using shad and BOOM, striper fishing seemed to go nuts.
I know there isn't "one" thing causing the decline of trophy fish. It is a variety of reasons. However, Texoma does hold it's own on sheer numbers of naturally produced stripers. I don't know that we will ever see it like it was in the 80's again.
What happened to all the sand bass? I know they are there, but they aren't there in the numbers that they were in the late 70's to early 80's. A lot of die hard sand bass fishermen swear the stripers ate them all! (lol) I know some get eaten by all predatory fish, but come on now. There used to be acres upon acres of surfacing fish out there. Maybe the fishing pressure got to them? I know of a few hundred that did anyway! lol