Other prime striper waters this month are the Canadian River below Eufaula Dam and the Fort Gibson tailwater.

"Peak dates kind of depend on the water flow," Peterson said. "In the Lower Illinois, it will last through late June. In the Arkansas, with the right flows, it lasts from mid to late spring. It's usually the last of May or early June when we do our striper brood stock collections, and that's on the main stem of the Arkansas."

You'll know the stripers are biting by checking the parking lots at the major ramps along the river.

"When the stripers are really hitting in the Lower Illinois, Gore Landing will be full," Peterson said. "It's a very popular sport fish."

Lake Texoma
Without a doubt, Lake Texoma's striped bass are Oklahoma's most popular fishing attraction, and strong year classes from 2006-07 should make 2008 a big year at the big Red River impoundment.

Paul Mauck, south-central fisheries supervisor for the ODWC, said that anglers can look forward to catching a lot of "box" fish, or stripers smaller than 20 inches. "Those are the ones anglers can keep and fillet, and there'll be a lot of fish available this year in that category," he said.

One possible complication involves the extended period of high water that flowed across the state last winter. Lake Texoma got so high that the Corps of Engineers kept the floodgates at the dam open for quite awhile, and Mauck said a lot of stripers went over the dam into the tailwater. Consequently, fishing should also be good this spring below the dam.

"Fishing was good below the dam last spring," Mauck said. "We haven't had any major water discharges for three years, so it kind of refreshed that whole system. There was a lot of fishing pressure and a lot of happy anglers. We'll have good fishing down there on through this year."

After the rain came a long spell of hot weather, which, Mauck said, stressed the lake's bigger stripers. They stopped eating during that time and lost a lot of weight, so they were very thin last autumn. This month, however, they should be plump and aggressive.