I absolutely love spending time in the woods in pursuit of deer and hogs this time of year but many years ago I learned that what I refer to as ‘the dead of winter’ is prime time for not only catching lots of fish but, big ones as well. Yep, some of the best catching of the year will occur during the next couple months but we hunters must abandon the deer stands occasionally to experience it.
My longtime friend Bill Carey with Striper Express on Lake Texoma called early last week and informed me that his son, veteran guide Chris Carey, had a day off during the week but the bite was so good that Chris just couldn’t leave the red hot striper action. If you know Chris, you understand his mindset. The guy lives and breathes striper fishing and he is as good as they come in consistently tricking the fish on artificial baits. Just a few weeks ago, I caught a 45-pound blue catfish off the dock at the marina and I hoped to enjoy a repeat performance with the big whiskerfish after experiencing one of the best striper bites of the year.
A call to a couple of great friends, Edgar and David Cotton from Kaufman County with an invite resulted
in a resounding YES! This father and son team had heard about using artificial Sassy Shad type baits this
time of year. The frantic striper action that is currently underway, fishing under big flocks of sea gulls working shad driven to the surface by the voraciously feeding stripers, is something they had long wished to experience.
Fishing is fishing and patterns have to be altered to fit every changing weather conditions. Most veteran anglers will agree that a steady breeze 10-to-12mph. greatly improves the action with open water schooling fish such as stripers. When Chris slowly eased his big Falcon King Striper boat out of the harbor at Mill Creek Resort and looked toward open water, the waves hitting the tire breakwater indicated a steady wind of 15 mph, occasionally gusting a bit stronger.
“I feel confident we can fish the open water later and get into some red hot schooling action under the birds but let’s try the sheltered waters back in the cove first, stripers and bait will either be back there, or they want," says Chris over the drum of the big outboard. "If the wind has pushed bait back into the cove, we might be in for some hot action."
The choice to fish sheltered waters if possible was an obvious one but alas, nary a bite after 30 minutes of tossing baits along the ledge of the submerged creek channel. The bait and ensuing predator fish had not showed up. It was hammer down time and we cleared the shelter of the cove and headed toward the expansive open waters of the lake. Through binoculars, Chris spotted a huge school of gulls dive bombing the surface a mile or so out from the marina.
Approaching a school of feeding fish requires a bit of caution. Run the boat right up within spitting distance of the top water feeding fish and the action will be short lived but, position the boat a long cast out in front, in the direction the school is moving and its possible to boat several fish before it’s time to crank up, make a big circle and once again get ahead of the fast moving school.
We pulled up out in front of a good half-acre of topwater feeding stripers and screaming gulls hovering over the surface, enjoying the easy pickings of shad attempting to escape the hordes of hungry fish below. At first, we managed to catch a few stripers staged on the outside edge of the big school but soon the bait, birds and stripers moved close to the boat, under the boat and out past the boat. All the strikes occurred within a couple feet of the surface.
The drill was to make a long cast, hold the rod tip high and crank the shad imitations soft plastics up close to the surface. Very often only a few cranks of the reel handle was possible until a fast moving striper nailed our baits.
I once heard the strike of a big striper compared to someone standing on the corner of a building with a
rope and throwing a loop over a fast moving motorcycle.
The strike of a striper is not a 'tap, tap' but rather an all-out attempt to kill and devour its prey. There is usually no setting of the hook when a big stripers decides your offering is dinner. No, it’s time to simply hang on and reach down to make sure that reel’s drag is not too tight.
So the morning went, after a few minutes of line sizzling action the school would sound and move on. Rather than set and wait them out, we often had another big flock of birds working fish and it was time to crank up and repeat the drill.
We found time to munch on some breakfast tacos I had prepared from the meat of that Choctaw hog I killed up in Oklahoma a few weeks ago during the boat ride from hotspot to hotspot. What a morning of striper catching that I am positive none of us will ever forget.
BUT WAIT- Big catfish at the dock! With the boat secured in the slip and the stripers being turned into tasty fillets, it was time to rig up the catfish rods with cut bait and catch a few catfish. I can honestly say I’ve never been privy to a better big blue catfish bite than what we experienced for about 30 minutes while the fish were being filleted. We landed and released three blues weighing between 25 pounds and 38 pounds, had a couple of obviously bigger fish break off and caught a good number of ‘eater’ blues.
Edgar Cotton landed a 13-pound channel catfish which is the largest of that species I’ve seen caught in many years.
So take a tip from Ole’ Luke and try to spend some time on the water the next couple of months. Those striper fillets will be mighty tasty at deer or hog hunting camp when blackened in a cast iron skillet and we all know what to do with those snow white blue catfish fillets!
Listen to Luke’s weekly outdoor podcast, “Catfish Radio with Luke Clayton and Friends”, just about everywhere podcasts are heard.
