BEST OF THE REST
Although the ODWC didn’t sample many big reservoirs, Gilliland said they were probably fairly strong and consistent. Those lakes are so large and contain so many potential spawning areas that they always produce a lot of fish. Naturally, a certain percentage will live to maturity.

“A lot of big name lakes aren’t there, but that’s because of high water,” Gilliland said. “If you have flooding issues at the time they might have been doing electrofishing, you get poor results, something that’s not comparable to previous years, and that’s what we look at.”

Even though it wasn’t sampled, Grand Lake is probably the best in the region, Gilliland said. Fort Gibson and Tenkiller are also pretty solid.

“They typically don’t have bad water problems from drought and related things,” Gilliland said. “Eufaula has its ups and downs. It’s a great lake, and it’s certainly on my list of the top few, but it is another one that is very much a product of water level fluctuation from year to year.

“Texoma is that way, too. People don’t think of it as a bass lake, but it does have pretty strong populations of largemouth, smallmouth and spotted bass. Tenkiller is a perennial performer. It doesn’t fluctuate as drastically as other northeastern lakes, and it has a better smallmouth population than those other lakes up there.”

Other lakes that received honorable mention from Gilliland were McGee Creek and Sardis, both well-known trophy-bass lakes.

“McGee Creek is a perennial favorite in terms of fish production, and it has fairly good size distribution,” Gilliland said. “Sardis has produced some good quality stringers in recent years in tournaments. Its electrofishing results haven’t been stellar, kind of middle of the pack, but its fishing quality has been pretty good.”

Two sleepers are lakes Elmer and Bixhoma. Lake Elmer is an ODWC lake near Kingfisher.

“For a while, John Stahl (northwest region fisheries supervisor) tried to keep it quiet because it has such a good bass population,” Gilliland said. Bixhoma is one that gets a little press. It’s got decent numbers, and it gets some fairly big fish caught out of there. Lake Watonga (at Roman Nose State Park) is kind of a sleeper. It has trout-fed bass and has produced some big fish. It’s a small lake, 55 acres, but the potential is there for some big fish.”

* * * Sometimes you can get so wrapped up in numbers that it can take the fun out of just going fishing. If you hit the right place at the right time, you can have a great experience catching a lot of fish, or a few big fish, or a lot of fish with a big one in the mix. The key is to figure out that magic combination and have fun doing it.

For that, any of the lakes in this article and all of the ones not mentioned will provide enough excitement to make the trip worthwhile.