Month: August 2016

Grand Lake Catfish

This weekends fishing trips were catching Grand Lake catfish.

Saturday’s trip was an evening trip with our good friends from Burn Co Barbecue in search of big catfish on Grand Lake in Oklahoma.  My wife and I put the boat in the water to catch bait a little after lunch time.  I threw the net about a dozen times catching some really nice sized gizzard shad to feed Mr. Whiskers.

We then went to a couple of rock piles (humps) to catch a few drum for bait.  It took us about an hour to catch a half dozen decent drum on slabs.  Then it was time to graph out a few areas and see what the catfish were doing.  What we found was bait at all depths and scattered catfish at all depths also…not looking good.  At least we had a good wind, unfortunately, it was a north wind bringing a major August cold front.  Low of 54 tonight, which is really low for  August in Oklahoma.

We picked out crew up at 5pm and headed to our first area to drag baits.  I marked the area a little and found fish and bait holding 25-35 ft deep.  We got set up and the first hour we boated about a dozen good eating sized catfish and missed more than we’d like to admit.

About 6:30pm the bite just stopped.  I moved us to go a little shallow where the wind was blowing in and that was a mistake I made.  It took me about half an hour on that pattern and only catching a couple of fish to realize what had happened.  A light bulb went off and I quickly reeled up heading to deeper water.  With the barometer changing drastically with the cool breeze kicking in the fish had moved out to 45-60ft deep and we were back to catching fish again.

We didn’t get anything big, but had a great time and caught a box full of good eating blue and channel catfish.  Looking forward to our next trip in a few weeks.

Sunday, we woke up to cool temps and a slight breeze.  We met our group at the ramp and got going at 6:30am.  Our first area we decided to look at had scattered fish from 20-55ft deep.  See a theme here for the weekend???  Scattered fish.  We set up our first path for dragging baits and immediately were in the fish.  We caught half a dozen at the deeper depths and missed an unreal number of short strikes.  It starts looking like it’s going to be a light bite day for sure.

We moved areas and the wind completely died.  FYI, if the wind lays and the water becomes flat so does the bite.  For the next several hours we did our very best to entice the scattered, now suspended fish, to bite with only a few to put int he box.

About 11am with a couple hours left in the trip we made a long drive to a different area.  Luckily, the wind picked up and put a ripple on the water and the bite picked up some.  This one last drift, we caught another half dozen fish in 12-61ft of water.  Now that’s scattered fish!!!

Great times and beautiful weather on Grand Lake this weekend…I look forward to more concentrated fish as the water cools for the fall/winter feed!!!

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Oologah Lake Blue Catfish

Oologah Lake Blue Catfish with new customers, Terrel and Alan, from west Texas.

We started the morning off dragging baits across shallow windblown flats near deep water.  The white bass and blue catfish have been feeding heavily on this pattern for several weeks when the wind is blowing right and today we had the right wind.

For anyone that hasn’t drift fished for blue catfish, the bite can be easy to hook…and difficult depending on their mood.  Let’s just say today was more difficult than easy.  The fish were nibbling more than anything which makes it hard to hook the fish.  The one’s that bite hard were few and far between.  These did great and quickly learned how to get a hook in the finicky fish.

Lots of laughs and good times were had filling the cooler with good eating Oologah catfish.  We used a variety of baits today with all of them working.  I think if we could have gotten away with using smaller baits today we would have caught a few more, but the smaller baits get pecked off quickly by the feeding white bass.

Most of our fish were caught in 10-20ft of water, but we did venture out to a 40ft flat and caught a couple.

Looking forward to having you guys again next weekend!!!

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Oologah Lake Blue Catfish

Oologah Lake blue catfish showed off this morning for a great group of guys this morning.

With the wind blowing hard out of the north, we headed to an area of the lake I haven’t fished in a long time to set up a drift dragging baits around feeding white bass catching the feeding blue catfish.  We drifted at .5-.7mph dragging baits in 8-24ft of water.  This pattern is a fun pattern to fish because you get all size ranges of blue catfish.  The eating sized blue catfish are feeding on the busted up shad that the white bass injure and the trophy blues move in eating the distracted feeding white bass.  We had one nice blue catfish puke up an 11 inch white bass today…

We started our first drift catching a dozen or so nice blue catfish getting everyone on the board except for Brett(the one that booked the trip).

As we set up for the next drift over a house foundation, the guys talked Brett, who wanted to watch the others catch, into getting in the hot seat and getting the next fish.  About a minute into the drift a big blue catfish slammed the rod down and the battle was on.  Several guys helped me get other rods out of the way and we got him in the net.  High five and fist bump time!

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Brett said he was done and went to the front of the boat to let the others play after his trophy.  Next up

was another good fish.These guys caught blue catfish all morning long and we all had a great time.  Nothing like having 8 comedians on a boat catching catfish!!!

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Oologah Lake Crappie and White Bass

Today, we had first time guests, Tom from New Mexico, on Oologah Lake crappie and white bass fishing.

We started the morning out fishing brush piles 10-14ft deep for crappie.  Lots of short fish this morning and we only caught a couple of keeper crappie the first couple of piles.  I believe it was pile 4 that we finally got on a good bite of good sized crappie.  We were using both minnows on a drop shot rig and soft plastic Crappie Kickers from Fle-Fly.  Both worked today, but I’d have to give the edge to minnows…especially the dead minnows for the larger crappie.  This is typical for mid to late summer crappie on Oologah.  Feed them what they want, not what we want to feed them!

After the sun got up high and the crappie stopped playing nice, we headed to catch a few white bass to end the day.  I believe we got Tom hooked on the slashing hard fighting white bass.  He loved catching them and took home a mess of white bass to go along with his crappie.  We started out using minnows, but quickly switched to the slab and fly combo catching two at a time and having a blast doing it.  White bass fishing is addicting for sure!

These guys were great to have on Oologah Lake catching both crappie and white bass!  I look forward to seeing you guys again this spring.

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Grand Lake Blue Catfish

Fishing for Grand Lake blue catfish with good friend and customer Eric.  We started out the evening in search of white bass, but after looking at a couple of areas that weren’t holding feeding white bass our sites changed to catfish as we both caught a couple of drum adding them to the cooler.  The white bass were suspended out in deep water and we didn’t want to wait on them to come in for their evening feed.

So off we went to an area that usually holds good blue catfish.  We marked the area and it looked like the blue catfish were holding close to the 25ft mark.  We got set up and it didn’t take long to start putting fish in the boat.  The bite was aggressive and the rods were slamming even with smaller fish.  I believe Eric was getting addicted to the rods slamming to the water!

After catching a cooler full of fish I asked Eric if he wanted to make a final drift before the sunset or run back and check on the white bass.  Without hesitation he said he wanted to catch more catfish!

We rebaited with fresh bait and set up for our final drift in search of Grand Lake blue catfish.  I was telling Eric how a big one will sometimes pull the rod down an little, but then the line will go slack as the catfish swims towards the boat.  They sometimes continue swimming towards the boat or they usually realize somethings up and take off hard the opposite way.

A few minutes later, one of the rods slow pulled down like it had something heavy and then went completely slack.  Eric was like a jackrabbit jumping out of the seat and got to the rod just as it slammed down and peeled drag out.  He struggled to get it out of the rod hold and once he did the fight was on.  This fish had an attitude problem and Eric enjoyed every minute of it.

I reeled in all the rods on that side of the boat and got the net back there just in time to get the angry thrashing Grand Lake blue catfish.

A few quick pics to show off to his buddies and we revived the trophy to let her grow live to be caught again someday.  Good times and a beautiful evening on Grand Lake catching blue catfish!!!  

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Fort Gibson Lake White Bass

Fort Gibson Lake White Bass fishing with a great group from North Dakota and Kansas.  They also got to learn that here in the south we call white bass, sand bass 🙂

We had planned on starting the trip at sunrise, but old mother nature had different plans with hard rain and lightning shooting across the sky.  A major front was passing that went from the Texas coast all the way up into Nebraska.  At about 7:15 while sitting at the boat ramp and the radar looked like it was breaking up just in the area around the lake.  We waited a few minutes to make a decision and the updated radar proved to be breaking up just in our area.

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We got the boat in the water and headed to a couple of shallow points that drop into deep water.  We caught a half dozen good white bass, but not the feeding frenzy we were hoping for.  So, off to a rock pile and we caught a few more.  Then a shallow wind blown rocky ridge catching a few more.  Then we made a run to an area that was getting blasted by the wind that had kicked up on the backside of the storm.  We found a few surfacing fish, cast out, and all hooked up, but then they disappeared.

We had just gotten on plane to head back to our first area when I saw one bird hit the water.  The birds didn’t stay, but something told me to go graph the area with the wind blowing into it.  I marked a few fish and decided to drop the trolling motor and not disturb the fish if they were on this really shallow sandy point.  I told the group that I would make a few casts and see if it was worth fishing.  First cast and I never got the bail flipped before I was doubled up.

I got the MinnKota remote, hit anchor lock, and we managed to boat fish after fish for a couple of hours.  The stars aligned and it turned into one of those magical days on the water.  I’m pretty sure we surpassed the 200 fish mark with them keeping about 40 for their grandparents a fish fry.  The nine year old boy is not ruined and fishing will never be the same for him.  His ear to ear smile and laughter as lost track of how many doubles he caught in a row.

Good times catching Fort Gibson Lake white bass with new friends from North Dakota and Kansas!

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