my dad and i are headed to texoma for the weekend. i was wanting to see if anyone had any info regarding catfish spots or even the right bait to use. we fish with SureShot catfish bait, but always open to any suggestions. thanks guys!

Cutshad, wind blow points, sandy beaches, shallow coves. You can use a carolina rig or a float. Either way use a circle hook and keep your bait as fresh as possible. They should be shallow from now till the end of june. Oh yeah, hold on!

cut shad, skipjack or bluegill will be your best bait to use and right now you should fish below the dam ... they'll be stacked up like crazy down there if you could launch a boat down there then that'd be the place to be for bluecat fishin right now ... it'll be hard for ya to find any blues in the lake itself ... channelcat can be caught in the lake around the riprap and broken rock structure using your doughbaits but I like cut bluegill for fishin channelcats. bluegill is a natural bait for channels and you'll catch a lot larger channelcat on bluegill most of the time rather than any prepared baits. jmho

what about the mudflats and coves around the islands north of big mineral?

I think those would be ok. You can also try along the channel just dont go to deep.

Tiny knows his stuff but I have been catching lot's of catfish lately in the lake very shallow. Mainly blues.

hey thanks for the help...we are going to try both spots. and maybe the dam. hopefully we will get some nice ones. we will be there saturday evening if anyone wants to meet up and try and get some kitties...pm me and i'll give you my number. thanks again guys!

post the same question on sixoldgeazers.com and they can probably help you out a little.

the ones I'm talkin about are the more mature fish that run up river ... the ones that actually spawn and not channelcat .. talkin bout mature bluecat as that's what I'm usually talkin about as that's my main target species ... it'll be tough to find mature bluecat in texoma right now. if you're looking for channels they'll stay resident and the small blues will still be in the lake too as they don't make the run.

so should we head into the river?

below the dam

what about time of day?

where do the big mature blues that are in the lake go? they just get lock jaw or what?

they're mostly migratory spawners depending on how the lake is layed out ... if it's got a big deep tributary with good flow coming into the lake like texoma has then they'll run up river until they hit the right time or hit an obstruction and then start looking for a suitable nesting area .... lakes like ray hubbard that are an inclosed system they can't run up river because there's not a good sized tributary and if there's no flow coming into the lake then they won't be able to run up as they won't even be able to detect the tributary. some will stay resident in texoma but there won't be many ... also on the years that there is no inflow they'll stay as well but that day after "the run" it's like a ghost lake most of the time because one day you'll be catching fish like crazy when they're staging at the mouth of the rivers and I mean LIKE CRAZY TOO. don't even have to find the fish because they'll be all over the upper end of the lake where the tributaries are fixin to make the run. an example would be last year on may 8 and 9 ... had two clients come up from mexico and they fished a total of 3.75 hours in two days and caught right at 300 lbs of fish both days on keystone and we fished the same spot both days and didn't have to look for any fish at all. then just a couple days later ... the whole lake was like a deadzone except for 3 to 5 lb fish ... well like it was on the tawakoni tournament ... ya'll know how great of a big fish lake that is ... out of 26 boats or something like that there were only two mature blues weighed in ... well our's couldn't really be considered mature yet as it was 14 lbs ... that's kinda like adolescent stage .. cody's 35 lb'r was the only mature blue weighed in and there were a lot of guides in that tournament that guide on that lake and most of them came to the scales with 3 to 5 lb'rs ... I thought that 30 lbs might win that tourney and thought that we had it in the bag when we put so many fish in the boat and had four around 7 lbs and a 14 lb'r cause I knew that mature blues would be almost impossible to find after I'd prefished it a couple days and seen that they'd already made the run.... this is what it'll be like in texoma now but below the dam it'll be just the opposite .... they'll be down there pretty thick this time of year ... the big males may not be easily caught but the big females will and maybe a few big males .... almost all the mature bluecat from 100 to 150 miles down river from the dam will have made the journey up to texoma dam or wherever the next obstruction is ... like a dam down the red river below texoma .... now this can be messed up also ... if there's another big tributary along the red river that has an increased flow or flowing better than the red the fish may pull up into that river instead of going up the red but I doubt that'd be able to happen cause I don't know of another river system that'd produce a bigger flow than the red so they'll be below the texoma dam right now. the kiamichi river is a pretty good sized river that runs into the red I think or maybe I'm thinking of another river and oklahoma got some massive rains down there this last month so they might have been diverted but there will still be a long span of river above that river that had blues that will pull up to the dam during/after the run.

now on ray hubbard I'd bet that those mature blues have mostly nested up under the cattails and will be back out in the main part of the lake around the end of june so they'll come back out a lot quicker than the ones on texoma lake ... the ones in texoma will have a time getting back to the main part of the lake if the river above the lake is shallow like it is on the arkansas above keystone ... we usually have to get a good rain or they have to have a good rain above kaw and cause them to open the flood gates in order for the fish to migrate back to the lake.

there's also another run that some of ya'll may not know about and that's the run they make in mid October to mid November ... the fish will make a mock run up river during that time as a lot of shad will make a run up river during that time if there's been a rain and that's an ideal time to fish the big rivers above lakes as the fish will make another run about then ... it may be about a week earlier on texoma but it's mid october to mid november here on keystone. most of the time I can't fish the run up river as the river is too shallow for me to get up there but texoma may have a deeper river system above the lake. if you can remember this info it'll make for a great trip on texoma to get up in the upper end of texoma on about october 10 to 15 and then further on up river too fishing free swimming shad with medium spinning gear and a small strong hook and talk about fun ... stripers blues and white bass make that October/november run and there's fish everywhere up river during this time. constant action most years during this time frame.

Not letting water out wont effect fishing under the dam tiny?

yes ... if they're not running any water below texoma the fish won't come up river like they would if they were running water ... I assumed that they were running water since we've had so much rain in oklahoma but they may not be down on texoma .. I didn't think that'd be possible though. if there's any flow at all though they'll still pull up there ... like if they run the turbines that'll be the same as if they were running the flood gates ... all you need is flow and they'll migrate up to the dam. if there's absolutely no flow coming out of the dam then they may not be up there as thick.

I just went and looked at the data and they've been releasing 10,000 cfps regularly every day at about 2pm to about 10pm so there will be a lot of fish down there it looks like although it's not been a steady release it'll still bring fish from down river during the run. no matter how it's been running there will still be a lot more big fish available to be caught below the dam than in the lake.