Bob Bledsoe

Choices, choices, choices. If you’re an angler living in Oklahoma, that’s an ongoing problem: so many choices at just about every point in the year.

You’ve got a long weekend in February. What to do? Fish for stripers? For egg-laden largemouths? For blue cats? Or maybe for crappie?

Whatever you choose, one or more Sooner fishing holes probably produce good results if you approach your selection correctly.

Let’s look at a few of the more promising options for each month of the year.

JANUARY
Stripers
One of the best things that ever happened to me as a fisherman was meeting up with an angler from Okmulgee who showed me how to catch far more stripers and sand bass (white bass) in the wintertime than I had ever caught before.

J.B. Bennett, who is now a professional fishing guide after retiring from a career in politics, showed me how to catch stripers and white bass on small jigs. He also showed me that the Lower Illinois River can be a bountiful fishery in midwinter.

There are several ways to catch stripers and big sandies on the lower Illinois, but Bennett’s methods always seem to be the most productive at this time of the year. He uses 1/4-ounce and 1/8-ounce jigs -- white, blue and occasionally red or chartreuse -- fished on 10-pound-test or smaller line -- to probe the lower Illinois River between the Highway 64 bridges and the mouth of the Illinois where it joins the Arkansas River.

Stripers and white bass move up out of the Arkansas into the relatively warm water that is flowing down the river from the Tenkiller Dam. Sometimes on chilly winter days the river seems loaded with line-sided fish.

If it’s your first visit to the area, you might want to launch a boat at the Gore Landing ramp and motor downstream past the U.S. 64 bridges. Just a few yards below the bridges, two channels converge (the river splits into two channels farther upstream and then rejoins here). From the convergence downstream to the mouth is usually the most productive stretch. The water below a large powerline crossing the river is often a good area. Also good at times is a navigable slough, on the left side going downstream, that is near the river’s mouth.

FEBRUARY
Crappie
I started fishing Eufaula for crappie because I could have my boat in the water there within an hour of leaving my house. But it soon became my favorite crappie lake because I have always been able to catch bigger crappie there than at other northeastern Oklahoma lakes. I’m only talking about a few ounces’ difference on average, but it’s enough to produce bigger, meatier filets.

In February, few crappie are thinking about spawning yet. But they do seem to move toward those brushpiles that are fairly close to shorelines where they will spawn later in the spring. There are many brushpiles in Eufaula. Some are unmarked and are made by individual anglers. Some are marked with buoys and were created by the state wildlife department. Both can be great places to catch crappie at this time of year.

Minnows, jigs or even a combination of both can be used to probe the brushpiles here. And don’t forget to check out the shallow water over the brushpiles. I’ve caught good numbers of crappie on a Eufaula brushpile one day and then been baffled why I couldn’t buy a bite there the next day, only to raise my jig up to within a foot or two of the surface over the top of a brushpile and begin catching crappie.

MARCH
White Bass
Most of Oklahoma’s large lakes have healthy populations of white bass -- “sand bass,” as most of us Okies call them. And in each of those lakes, the sand bass swim up flowing creeks and rivers in the spring to spawn.

But the spawning run at the Horseshoe Bend area at the far upper end of Lake Tenkiller is one of the most popular and most bountiful sand bass runs in the state.

Depending on water flows and water temperatures, you might find only smaller males congregated in the area, or you might find larger females, or you might find both. Anywhere from a mile or so below the Horseshoe Bend boat ramp up to the mouth of Barron Fork Creek, you may find huge numbers of sand bass gathered.

Be careful, though, if you try to run upstream to Barron Fork Creek. That run’s only possible in most boats if the lake’s above normal level, which it often is in the spring.