A day on Texoma chasing stripers

When you meet Steve Hollensed you first realize what a nice person he is. Then it becomes very apparent how good he is at his job and how much he loves to fish. Those are just a couple of the reasons I keep going back to Steve for some incredible striper fishing, and of course his wife's home made brownies! Plus the brownies are on the boat with you while fishing, just another little slice of heaven!

So we started at ~2PM Wednesday and went on the hunt for early season striper. The fish had been a little active but not blitzing yet. The plus was that the fish biting were the large ones, I liked the sound of that! We headed out and checked one point where the fish might be moving into but it was a bit early for that point to be productive. We ran across the lake to another creek mouth where there were some fish feeding the day before.

 

 

We drifted in and watched as the depth finder started marking large groups of fish. Lots of fish were in the creek and we were getting excited. The boat drifted into the creek slowly and I put the fly deep to try and get some of them to move. Nothing! But, we were following a live bait casting boat through the creek who was trolling through with his motor running. They caught a few but I think the motor was putting those fish on the defensive. We felt like it was best to let them rest and relax for the late afternoon bite.

We moved to a creek and found a few birds working in there. The fly was changed to a smaller clouser in chartreuse and white which got our first fish of the day on. A nice 2 to 2 1/2 pound striper, followed quickly by a similar weight sand bass. The skunk was gone and we felt like we were finally in the game. After another brownie we checked our options and thought it was time to head back to the first creek channel.

Once there we found some fish but not the numbers we saw before. I was working the fly deep and trying to stir up something when Steve swore he had seen a couple of fish blowing up by the shore and so we discussed moving that way. It was really too early to have fish feeding up top but I trust Steve's ability to spot striper feeding up top, he has seen a few of those over the years!

As we got over that way we saw the birds and noticed they were really acting like they wanted to start working some shad on the top, that's a great sign! We moved over and shut the big motor down and trolled into the area and BAM! The fish hit the top and it was on, STIPER BLITZING!!!

 

It was brief but it was there and we had hit it just right. It wasn't long until we had the first one of this school up, and then a bigger one, and a bigger one. I was casting to a rising fish who was out of the main school and thought that I should concentrate on being in the main pod when SLAM!!!!  I had another strike and set the hook then put tension to him and he almost yanked the rod out of my hands! THIS IS A BIG FISH!!!! I thought about trying to put him on the reel and then decided to keep the rod high and the line tight. He ran and then eased, ran and then eased and made the big mistake of turning and running toward us and I got the line up and tight, Steve hit the net and WHAM, we had him in the boat. No need to ask on this one, it is a picture fish!

 

 

There was more fishing after that but no bite to speak of and we let the day die slowly to dusk. It was a great day of fly fishing for stripers on Texoma. And it is always my pleasure to fish with Steve Hollensed.