Through my many years spent on the water and in the woods enjoying my passions of hunting and catching fish, one of the absolute truths I’ve learned is the fact that, “It isn’t over until it’s over.”
This holds true regardless if someone is embarking on his last day of an archery elk hunt in the high country or - as was the case last week a fishing trip with my friends at Striper Express on Lake Texoma - the line-stretching excitement of a red-hot bite after a couple hours of casting and winding without a single strike!
Bill Carey, the self-professed old man of Striper Express, invited my great friends Jeff Rice and Larry Weishuhn and me up for an early morning striper fishing trip a few days ago.
My pre-trip conversation with Bill on the phone when something like this: “Luke the fishing has been great, we are going to meet at the dock at 5:30 a.m. If all goes right, we will be back at the cleaning station by mid-morning with a good box of stripers.”
This was music to my ears...I had no desire to fish during the middle of the day with temperatures at or above the century mark.
“We are all about beating the heat on our summer trips," continued Bill. "With any luck, we will get in on an hour or so of topwater action and then resort to lead slabs fished vertically below the boat to round out the morning. I’ve got us set up to fish with Todd Mehalko, one of top guides and here at Striper Express all my guides are top guides. I have a saying, ‘no heroes-no zeros.' We all work together to insure the very best fishing trip possible here on our beautiful lake.”
As we eased out of the Mill Creek Marina, Todd briefed us with the general pattern he expected us to encounter and gave some tips about lure presentation and what to expect.
“If things go as they have the past several days, we will get in on some topwater action early, big striper schools have been running the submerged ledges around a big flat that comprises several acres," Todd predicted. "There is lots of bait in the area and stripers move up out of the deep water to feed during the first several hours of daylight each morning.”
We were hammer down in Todd’s big guide boat for about fifteen minutes when he eased the throttle back and began to study the sonar closely.
“See all those bait balls plotting about 20 feet below us?" he asked. "That’s shad and the bigger hooks around the bait is stripers, lot of 'em. The drill is simple, drop your slabs to bottom and then burn them up through the fish. If your lure doesn’t get hit on the way up, keep your thumb on the reel and let it free fall. If you feel a pause, lock it down and set the hook!"
We spent the first hour or so dropping slabs down to the scores of inactive fish hanging around the bait balls. The fish were there, as they had been on a daily basis, but they were not hungry - yet.
That’s when Todd made a profound statement: “We have to believe in the process.”
What he was eluding to is the fact that he fully expected the stripers to make a move on the baitfish and the key to catching them was to remain with the pattern that had been as solid as the Rock or Gibraltar that past couple of weeks. We dropped our baits and we retrieved them without a single nibble. A novice fisherman might think they just weren’t biting and head back to dock. But our boat was not filled with novice fishermen. We, just like Todd, had faith in the process!
A couple hours into the trip, Todd moved our boat up onto the big flat and immediately noted the sonar was lit up with not only shad but big, big schools of stripers as well.
The plan was simple and highly productive. We motored upwind a couple hundred yards from the drop off, up where the lake bottom was flat, and let the slight breeze push us back to the edge. It was game on from our first drop. Lake Texoma has the most liberal striper limit in the state, 10 fish per angler with only 2 twenty inches or longer.
We were hauling in fish left and right and often had multiple fish fighting drag at the same time. Striper fishing gets frantic when the fish really turn on and these were definitely on a feeding frenzy. Technique was really important. Get the bait down and you would almost always get a strike. This was not a two-minute drill! The bite lasted until we caught our limit including some hard pulling ‘overs’ as stripers over twenty inches are called. The largest measured 28 inches with several almost that big.
We were heading back to dock about ten-thirty as the sun was just beginning to heat things up. When the boat slowed to an idle inside the marina break waters and the wind was no longer in our faces, we were all glad we got up early and beat the heat!
As Mr. Carey says, "If you think it’s too hot to fish, that’s not the way we do it!"
To learn more about striper fishing on Texoma or book a trip, visit www.striperexpress.com.
Listen to Luke’s weekly radio show/podcast “Catfish Radio with Luke Clayton and Friends” just about everywhere podcasts are found. Email Luke through his website www.catfishradio.org
