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Fall striper bite under way at Texoma: Lower temperatures inducing fast-paced action
BY Luke Clayton, Special to Star Local News
As guide Dave Escamilla with Sparky’s Guide Service eased the big 30-foot striper boat out of the harbor at Alberta Creek Marina, the sky was full of seagulls.
Gulls as far as the eye could see, dive-bombing the surface of the lake, picking up hapless shad that were driven to the surface by greedy stripers intent upon eating every baitfish they could catch.
Winter is just around the corner and Mother Nature has somehow clued the stripers to once again feed heavily while the food supply is abundant.
Striper fishing has been good at Texoma throughout the summer, but it’s the fall bite that attracts striper anglers from across the country to this great border lake. Idle speed is required around all marinas and the slow-paced leading from the marina to the open water was almost more than we could take. Larry Sparks, owner of Sparky's Guide Service, decided to take a guide’s holiday and invited me to enjoy some fast-paced catching with him and let his top guide, nicknamed Little Dave, run the boat and be our guide.
“We will be fishing with 5-inch Glo Shim-Me Shad soft plastic bodies on 1.5-ounce jig heads,” said Sparks as we motored toward the first school of feeding stripers. “We dip the tails of these shad bodies in a product called Spike It Garlic Dip-N-Glo. This has proved the most effect bait this time of year and will remain so throughout the winter.”
Little Dave began pulling back on the throttle, turning the craft hard starboard as he studied the graph.
“We’re on the leading edge of a huge school of stripers,” he said. “The water is 45-feet deep and stripers are stacked from the bottom up about 15 feet. Some of them are making it all the way to the surface, but the heaviest concentration of fish remains deep.”
There were at least 300 gulls dive-bombing the surface all around the boat and the water was occasionally dimpled with shad attempting to fly and evade the greedy stripers.
“Don’t cast, just drop the baits down until you make contact with bottom and crank them up slowly about 20 feet,” Escamilla said. “If you don’t get a strike, put the reel in free spool and drop them to bottom again.”
My bait never made it to bottom.
I felt the line go slack as the lure fell.
Frantically, I cranked the reel handle and raised the rod in hopes of getting the hook set. The line was slack but, with taunt line, I felt another fish hit the bait hard. As I did battle with my first striper of the day, I noted my companions were all locked in mortal combat. This was definitely not complicated fishing. The name of this game was to get the baits close to bottom and keep slack out of the line so the strikes could be felt.
For about 10 minutes, the strikes were continuous.
At a time of catching such as this, it’s sheer pandemonium.
I boated several fish and forced myself to set the rod down in time to grab my Nikon and capture Little Dave netting the biggest striper of the day for Sparks.
“Roll them in boys,” Escamilla said. “It’s time to move; this school has passed under the boat. Just look at that huge flock of gulls off the point over there.”
As I glanced in the direction the guide was pointing, it was easy to see where the fish were. It appeared as though every gull from the Texas coast was working an area a couple hundred yards square. Baitfish were popping out of the water and stripers had the surface churning. As Little Dave motored us within casting range, I heaved my big bait out on a long cast, raised the rod tip and began dancing the lure back toward the boat, just a few feet under the surface. The imitation shad lure didn’t make it far before it was slammed hard by a striper. Again, every angler on the boat was either hooked fast to a striper or voicing displeasure over missing a good strike.
There was little time to cry over the one that got away though.
It was only seconds until another greedy striper whacked out baits.
Sparks (sparkysguideservice.com or: 580-916-2293) predicts this fast and furious striper bite under flocks of feeding gulls will continue for another month, but the winter fishing is traditionally when the bigger fish of the year are landed.
“When the water temperature drops into the mid- to low-50s and below, we will be fishing with the same baits but presentation will be a lot different,” Sparks said. “We’ll begin working the baits much slower, along submerged humps and ridges off river channels, targeting larger stripers in the deeper water. When fishing under feeding gulls, sonar is not nearly as important as it will become in the cold weather months.
“We’ll be watching our sonar closer, looking for larger fish hanging out around pods of shad.”
Just a couple days after this rod-bending fishing trip, I find myself making plans for Round 2 with Texoma’s schooling stripers. According to Sparks, I can expect the action to be as good or better than this most recent trip.
As good will suffice.
I cannot imagine better!
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