Sooner 9/21/11
Fished Sooner Lake on Wednesday 9/21 with Mitch Hale (OG+E Manager, Community Affairs), Jack Fry (Mayor, Midwest City) & Justin Smedley (Director of Business Development Eastern Oklahoma County Technology Center).
Arrived at Sooner about 9:30 AM after making a stop at App Bay on Keystone for bait, splashed the boat and made ready for my clients for a day of fishing. Clients arrived a little later than planned, but we were fishing by 11:00, and all was good as we were greeted with a short flurry of willing biters at our first location. When the bite slowed to a crawl at the first spot, we made our way down lake to the pump in area down by the dam/intake canal and found the water there to be very dirty and stained due to the influx of very muddy water being pumped in. After a short period of finding no willing biters there, I went looking at several hump, points & drop off locations that Sooner fish are known to frequent and found a good concentration of willing feeders on a drop off of a mid-lake hump in 30 fow! It was kind of like a circus the first 45 min or so as we were getting hammered and slammed before rods could even get put in the rod holders, and grins & laughter were aplenty fore & aft! We actually had a good mix of both Hybrids & Stripers at this location, and we were also keeping ONLY gut or gill hooked fish so I've no idea really how many fish were caught. Bill James arrived at the location towards the end of the mid-lake spree and saw them pull several fish from the deep as well. I had a battery going south on me by this time as it was a pretty breezy day with winds and whitecaps from the NE hammering us, so we finally left that spot and fished a couple more locations as we made our way in towards the ramp.
While fishing was "good" overall, it wasn't what I'd call a stellar day of fishing I'd witnessed over the past month, but my clients left with a couple of gallons of fresh fillets, smiling faces and comments that it had been one of their best days of fishing ever, so in the end, what more can a guy ask for, eh???
Water temps ranged from 72-74, majority of fish came from 24-31 fow. 3-4 inch shad were the ticket to keeping the white perch at bay for the most part, but using smaller shad seemed to provoke the WP into either killing the small shad, or eating them. Total white perch caught = 7 (never to swim again)
Arrived at Sooner about 9:30 AM after making a stop at App Bay on Keystone for bait, splashed the boat and made ready for my clients for a day of fishing. Clients arrived a little later than planned, but we were fishing by 11:00, and all was good as we were greeted with a short flurry of willing biters at our first location. When the bite slowed to a crawl at the first spot, we made our way down lake to the pump in area down by the dam/intake canal and found the water there to be very dirty and stained due to the influx of very muddy water being pumped in. After a short period of finding no willing biters there, I went looking at several hump, points & drop off locations that Sooner fish are known to frequent and found a good concentration of willing feeders on a drop off of a mid-lake hump in 30 fow! It was kind of like a circus the first 45 min or so as we were getting hammered and slammed before rods could even get put in the rod holders, and grins & laughter were aplenty fore & aft! We actually had a good mix of both Hybrids & Stripers at this location, and we were also keeping ONLY gut or gill hooked fish so I've no idea really how many fish were caught. Bill James arrived at the location towards the end of the mid-lake spree and saw them pull several fish from the deep as well. I had a battery going south on me by this time as it was a pretty breezy day with winds and whitecaps from the NE hammering us, so we finally left that spot and fished a couple more locations as we made our way in towards the ramp.
While fishing was "good" overall, it wasn't what I'd call a stellar day of fishing I'd witnessed over the past month, but my clients left with a couple of gallons of fresh fillets, smiling faces and comments that it had been one of their best days of fishing ever, so in the end, what more can a guy ask for, eh???
Water temps ranged from 72-74, majority of fish came from 24-31 fow. 3-4 inch shad were the ticket to keeping the white perch at bay for the most part, but using smaller shad seemed to provoke the WP into either killing the small shad, or eating them. Total white perch caught = 7 (never to swim again)