Bob Bledsoe

OCTOBER
Smallmouth Bass
An October float trip or a weekend of wading on one of southeastern Oklahoma’s smallmouth bass streams can be an idyllic outing and can produce a lot of exciting action on light tackle.

The Mountain Fork and Glover rivers, portions of the Kiamichi River, Eagle Fork Creek and several other creeks in LeFlore, McCurtain and Pushmataha counties can all provide lots of good smallmouth action.

Spinning tackle, small jigs and plastic grubs are probably the most consistent producers of smallmouths, spotted bass and big sunfish in these streams. But a baitcasting rig and a big, noisy buzzbait can yield surprisingly good results too.

NOVEMBER
Crappie
Kaw Lake is one of Oklahoma’s best crappie fisheries. And in late autumn some local anglers sack up the slabs using slabs. That is, they catch lots of good-sized crappie using heavy slab spoons to jig around deep-water structure in the middle of the lake.

Yes, you can use small jigs and minnows too, but I’ve seen some awfully impressive stringers of crappie that averaged a pound or more each caught with slab spoons.

These flashy pieces of metal catch fish because to the crappie they resemble a baitfish of some sort -- a shiner, common minnow or shad. And here’s another tip you can file away for future use: They catch more than crappie!

DECEMBER
Blue Catfish
I mentioned earlier that blue catfish have all but taken over many of Oklahoma’s larger reservoirs. In the early to mid-1980s, channel cats were still the dominant catfish species in most large lakes. But year by year -- first at Texoma and Eufaula, then at other large lakes, one by one -- blue cat populations blossomed and channel cats declined.

That’s good in one way, though, because blue cats are aggressive predators that typically strike hard, whereas channel cats, even really big ones, often nibble and nibble and toy with a bait without ever really taking it in their mouths and getting the hook.

Throughout much of the year, the most productive way to catch blue cats is drifting the flats with cut shad or live shad. But in the winter, it often pays to anchor atop the dropoff where a major river channel flows through the lake and then fish around that submerged structure. Some days the fish will be on top of the dropoff. Some days they’ll suspend on the vertical area. And some days they’ll be close to the bottom of the river channel. Sonar, and trial-and-error fishing, can tell you where to find them.

Many anglers, myself included, are surprised to learn what really great catfishing action is available during the colder months. I grew up thinking of catfishing as a summertime pursuit, but I believe fishing for them in winter is even better. * * * The options described above certainly aren’t the only ones for fishing in Oklahoma through the year. The accompanying graphic shows other promising choices. No matter whether you prefer noodling for flatheads in a snake-infested logjam in a muddy Oklahoma creek or drifting nymphs through a riffle in the lower Mountain Fork River to catch trout, Oklahoma has a fishery to fill the bill.