Lake Texoma Fishing Report

Tinker’s Lake Texoma Fishing Report July 1, 2004 Lake Texoma is at a seasonal normal level of 618.51. The water temperature is 80 degrees. If the weather goes as forecast this month, it should be excellent striper fishing all the way through July. The stripers are in large schools in search of forage to fill their empty bellies. These large schools can be found from the dam west to Eisenhower Marina and north to Washita Point, then west all the way to the Islands. The stripers will surface during the morning until the sun comes through the clouds. The early clouds have been staying over us until the middle of the morning. Using topwater lures like pencil poppers, zara spooks, striper strikes or the larger saltwater series chug bugs produce stripers up to seventeen pounds. After the stripers go down, start using two ounce slabs on the huge schools of silversides. Ripping the narrow long slabs off the bottom or jigging them at the depth the sonar shows the feeding fish. When using the wider short slabs that flutter down, drop the slab to the bottom, reel fast ten to fifteen turns and drop the slab again. Stay alert; the striper will hit the slab on the fall. Both types of slabs will produce eighteen to twenty-eight inch fish. Using live shad for bait is always a great way to finish off your limit of stripers. The Oklahoma flats or Mac Creek area will produce some smaller stripers to fill your limit using the smaller baits. The larger gizzard shad are excellent baits to free line in the afternoons along the river channels. This can be slow fishing, but will produce some lunker silversides in the eighteen to thirty pound range. Customers have caught several stripers over twelve pounds in the last two weeks on slabs and topwater lures. Topwater fishing was excellent the last couple of weeks. This action should last into August. The long hours of daylight allow us to fish two trips a day per boat. I guarantee afternoon fishing will produce some very large post spawn stripers. If you can’t get the whole day off, try to take off after noon and fish the afternoon into the evening. There is plenty of daylight to fish after 3:00 PM. We have a few boats available for morning or afternoon fishing during the July 4th weekend. Always practice safe boating and respect the other fishermen. During late spring and early summer thunderstorms can pop up fast. Some of these can have lightening and very high winds. Most don’t last very long. Stay alert and have a fun- filled Independence Day weekend on the lake. To see pictures of these catches and other fish caught this month by our customers, click on the following link. http://home.texoma.net/~tinker/fishpics04/fishpics06.html Go to http://www.tinker.net, and read testimonials sent in by our customers and see pictures of the fish they caught over the last year. Links to both are on the right side of my home page. For more info please call us toll free at 1-888-TINKERS (888-846-5377) or email us at tinker@tinker.net. Reported by Jean Tinker Toney, Tinker’s Striper Guide Service, Pottsboro, Texas