For the past several months my friends Jeff Rice, Larry Weishuhn and I had looked forward to our annual trip to Lake Texoma to catch topwater stripers with Bill and Chris Carey’s Striper Express guide service. The trip is always great fun with lots of fishing action. It gives us the opportunity to film a show for our weekly “A Sportsman’s Life” and also provides fodder for articles for Larry and I. May is prime topwater time and what fisherman doesn’t enjoy getting his line stretched by stripers, especially when you can actually see them hitting your plug on the surface!
Multiple days of heavy rain in the watershed above Lake Texoma caused Ole’ Red River to swell to the brim. Texoma quickly became flooded with chocolate-colored water and the red hot top water striper bite that was getting underway disappeared. As a matter of fact the high, off-colored water basically shut the fishery down. It couldn’t have happened at a worst time. It’s tough to get a spot in May with an established guide on Texoma and Striper Express is always booked solid. The high water and canceled trips disappointed many anglers and put a financial burden on fishing guides that depend on May bookings.
Bill Carey called several days before our appointed day to fish.
“Luke, I know you’ve been keeping up with the flooding up here," Bill began. "Fishing is shut down on the lake but we have a plan B that I think you will like. We have an alternate lake that receives little pressure. It has a healthy hybrid striper population and sandbass fishing is as good as it gets with plenty of those “magnum” sandbass that I know you love to catch. I’ve got a saying, 'Fishermen are gonna fish'. What do you think about changing plans and you guys join Chris and I for a morning of fast-paced action? This won’t be topwater big fish action at Texoma but I guarantee it will be lots of fun and provide plenty of fillets for the shore lunch we are planning."
I was all in with the mention of hybrid stripers and the opportunity to spend time with all my friends. I knew Larry and Jeff would jump at the chance to fish a new lake. Plan B was formulated and we would meet at the dock in a couple days. I’ll tell you how the morning unfolded but first let’s revisit the previous afternoon of fun on a backwoods creek.
Jeff has some land near Lake Fork with a feeder creek that provides excellent white bass fishing during the spawn and red hot action on channel catfish just about any time of the year. The fishing gets really good for several days after a period of rainfall when current is created.
Jeff has a Vineyard Max fish feeder on his dock which always concentrated catfish, current or not. We arrived at Jeff’s place mid afternoon and went post haste to the dock; our fishing rods rigged with slip corks and number 6 treble hooks.
Jeff had some cubed pork liver for bait and the three of us quickly became ‘cork watchers’. There is something I have always loved about fishing with a cork or floater. One second my cork is setting motionless on the water surface, I’m mesmerized by the distant hooting of owls, croaking of a bullfrog back in the lily pads somewhere, peacefully watching the seeds of cottonwood trees floating through the air like snowflakes.
Then, when I least expect it, my cork disappears as a feisty channel catfish grabs the bait and goes deep. I’m brought back to reality when I instinctively jerk the rod back and set the hook. I feel the lightly set drag sing as the fish heads for cover of a mass of tree roots on the other side of the little creek. I keep pressure on the fish and soon have him dockside in the fish basket.
“Two fillets for our dinner tonight of blackened catfish,” says Larry as he admits that he just missed a fish while watching my antics!
We fished for a couple hours and caught plenty of very fresh catfish for a big meal of blackened fish. Jeff broke out his Bubba electric rechargeable fillet knife and soon I had a big pile of fillets to work with. I don’t use the traditional blackening method introduced by Chef Paul several decades ago. Rather than use a smoking white hot dry skillet for blackening, I use a little butter in a hot (but not smoking) skillet to blacken the fish.
I’ve found Open Season blackening seasoning available at Cabela’s to be the best. It comes in a big container with enough seasoning for several meals. After a great meal and the telling of some tall tales (mostly all true) in Jeff’s camphouse, we hit the hay. We needed to get a good night’s sleep and meet Bill and Chris at the dock early the next morning.
A bit after daylight the next morning, we found Bill and Chris Carey at the dock, ready to go. The sky was cloudy and a bit breezy. We would have to watch for pop-up thunderstorms but the cooler weather and cloud cover felt great. I’ve fished with Chris since he first began guiding clients at the age of 19 he is now approaching the half century mark with more than three decades guiding under his belt.
I’ve fished with literally hundreds of professional fishermen through my forty years as an outdoor writer and can attest that Chris is the complete package when it comes to finding and catching fish. He knows the bottom structure of Texoma like most people know their route to and from work.
But we were on a lake that was somewhat new to Chris. As we pulled away from the dock, he pointed the nose of the big Falcon guide boat toward a bit of isolated bottom structure.
“We’ve been enjoying some good catches of not only keeper hybrids here but lots of sandbass as well," Chris reports. "I have these rods rigged with half-ounce slabs. Let them hit bottom, raise them up a few feet and work them vertically...you should get bit pretty quickly.”
We did and as predicted the lake's chunky sandbass were stacked on the small piece of bottom structure. As we worked the lead spoons near bottom, Chris did a bit of test fishing with downsized soft plastic on a jig head.
“For some reason, the hybrids are hitting these downsized jigs better than slabs," Chris explains. "Let me do a bit of test fishing. If the hybrids are actively feeding, we might want to change baits and target the bigger fish.”
Chris made a long cast and watched his line as the bait fell to bottom in water about 15 feet deep. BAM! I watched his rod bow heavily toward the water’s surface and for the next couple minutes a 22-inch hybrid did what 22-inch hybrids do -- pull like a mule.
Rods with jigs were passed to all and we enjoyed catching several hard-pulling keeper hybrids. Then the hybrid bite stopped as quickly as it began -- back to slabs to round out a big ‘mess’ of sandbass.
Back at the cleaning station Chris quickly turned our catch into a mega pile of fillets, many of which wound up blackened in my cast iron skillet.
“Fishermen gonna fish.” That’s what Bill said before the trip and that’s what we did. Fishing at Texoma will probably be shut down for a few more weeks but thanks to plan B, Striper Express continues to put their clients in some very exciting action!
For more information, contact www.striperexpress.com.
This trip is now a segment of “A Sportsmans Life” hosted on YouTube and Carbon Tv www.carbontv.com
Contact outdoors writer Luke Clayton through his website www.catfishradio.org
