The lake is at flood levels and will continue to rise before it peaks in two days. With so much more surface area on the water the best way to locate fish is to watch for diving birds. When the stripers begin feeding on shad, some of the dead and wounded shad float to the surface. The sea gulls begin diving down to pick up the wounded shad. Following the diving birds is the best way to stay on top of hungry fish. The most productive lures are white slabs, chrome rattle traps, or any 2" - 4" artificial bait that mimicks a shad.

Stripers are hitting top water plugs behind the islands early morning until about 30 minutes after sunrise. Once the sun is higher in the sky, look for schools of stripers along old river beds and the mouths of creeks in 30 to 50 feet of water. They are hitting small size shad like the one in the photo. Larger size shad don't seem to be on the menu and are being passed by for the smaller shad offerings. We are also picking up a number of small blue cats around 1 - 2 lbs on bottom while targeting stripers using small live shad as bait.

The water on Texoma is starting to clear up after the flood a few weeks ago, and the stripers are taking full advantage of it. Right at day break we found some big stripers in 60 feet of water and dropped live shad down on them. No takers After that we ran further down the lake, and saw birds working. The stripers started blowing up the surface about 10 minutes before official sunrise. We chased them nonstop until 10:00am. Today they liked a solid white slab, solid color chartreuse slab, and 1/2 oz chrome Kastmaster spoon. They didn't care for swim baits or jigs. Everything my crew caught was in water 10ft - 20ft deep and fairly close to sandy shorelines.