Lake Texoma Fishing Report :: I love fall!

Sports

By Brian Prichard, Stripers, Inc.

Nov 1, 2025

I love fall! I enjoy how everything slows down, the drought ends, the heat subsides, and everything feels fresh. There is gratitude in the air and it is simply a joy just to be outside. With the children back in school and hunting season underway, the lake is far less crowded too, especially during the weekdays, all the while the fishing only gets better and better as the water continues to cool.

Fall is the best time of the year to fish for fast action, the birds make it easy. Millions show up to the lake and point you where every feeding frenzy on the lake is located then its swimbaits and slabs as you chase the birds to keep up with the fast moving school of fish. When you pull up to a school, the fish are so thick that the graph won't even ready bottom and its fish on as soon as you drop your slabs down. This is my kind of fishing!

November is the month when all of this gets underway, at least with chasing the birds. The fish are already worked up into feeding frenzies right now and working the surface. The birds show up in November to help us find them and make it even better. Fishing here lately has been really good during the week most days. The fish are on the surface in shallow water around 10-25 feet deep and the sizes are all mixed up, big fish, little fish, and sandbass all feeding together. We have to pick through a lot of little fish but we are still able to catch a few overs, some nice box fish, and lot of nice sandbass. Usually we can catch a limit of stripers and a lot of sandbass on slabs and topwaters. Most trips are catching well over 100 fish as we sort through smaller fish in order to bring home 50-60 nice fish to the table. The action has been non-stop for almost the whole time we are out on the water.

If you are looking to find fish right now on Lake Texoma and not seeing anything on the surface, look for areas with ledges and ditches in the 10-25 ft. range and go slow using your graph to look for fish, as soon as you mark a couple of hooks stop and turn on the splasher or thumper or start beating the water with an old rod, anything to make noise. Usually there are several fish in the area scattered out and they will congregate under your boat, now drop down your slabs and bounce them on the bottom like your dribbling a basket ball down on the bottom of the lake, as soon has it hits bottom jerk it up hard then let it fall back down again. Make sure it hits the bottom every time you let it fall then jerk it up again, you may have to let out a little more line to make sure it hits bottom every time. Slabbing the bottom this way is the easiest way for anyone to catch fish, its even easier than live bait when it is working and it works for half of the year under the right conditions. While you're fishing, always keep your eyes peeled and scanning the horizon for another school to be hitting the surface near by because when the bite dies down where you are at you will want to move on to a new spot and make it happen again, don't stay in the same spot if they stop biting. To be successful using lures you are constantly on the move.

In the fall, fishing is the easy part, its catching the anglers that's harder this time of the year. With school, hunting, and cooler weather, there are not as many clients to fill the books as there is in the summer. As a remedy to this I have started running open seat charters on certain days where anyone can show up for $150 a head, giving people who don't have anyone else to go with the opportunity to go fishing with a group to share the cost. It is a little more work on my end as I have to answer 5 times as many questions but I have really enjoyed it and gotten to meet a lot of wonderful folks. To help organize these trips I have crated a new Facebook group www.facebook.com/groups/texomaopenseat so we can share information and help each other picking the best days to go out. If you are interested, please join the group and I'll keep your freezer full.

I'm expecting the birds to start showing up next week as we have some stronger cold fronts in the forecast. We will chase the birds through the end of December then its time for the structure fishing to start. The structure fishing is really my favorite time of the year to fish as there is practically no one else on the water and I'm able to reliably find the bigger fish and make them bite casting swimbaits. I'm all about catching big fish and structure fishing is my most reliable method of catching them. You can book your trip online at www.stripersinc.com or give me a call at (903)815-1609 and I'll get you setup. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask. I'll be looking forward to fishing with you!