Brad Hendricks, the author's brother, shows the kind of hefty stripers Oklahoma anglers can tangle with in the Lower Illinois, South Canadian or Arkansas River systems this month. Photo by Bryan Hendricks.

Several years ago, my friend, Bob Borgwat, took a little trip to the Lower Illinois River to fly-fish for rainbow trout.

Standing at the tail of a riffle, he saw fish breaking, but didn't have any flies heavy enough to reach them. That probably was a blessing because he would have found that his tackle wasn't heavy enough to handle those fish. They weren't just dimpling the surface sipping for scuds and small crustaceans. They were slashing the surface, sucking down more substantial prey.

Had Borgwat managed to hook one, he would have faced the wrath of a striped bass that might have pushed 30 pounds. Trout? Those stripers eat trout for breakfast, which is precisely what they were doing at that moment.

Months later, Borgwat returned with more substantial gear.

While the Lower Illinois is one of Oklahoma's prized trout fisheries, it is best known for the giant striped bass that come up out of Kerr Reservoir on the Arkansas River. Many local anglers like to fish for trout from the bank of the Lower Illinois below Tenkiller Dam, but if you talk to those folks, you'll hear tales of giant stripers taking their bait and tearing their Zebco 33 rigs to shreds. They talk about it in tones of disgust, but you can tell they're proud of it, too. They know they haven't a prayer of landing a big striper with those rigs, but the humiliation was fun while it lasted.

While the Lower Illinois is Oklahoma's most famous trophy striper fishery, several other places in the eastern part of our state harbor big stripers as well. Namely, they are the South Canadian River below Lake Eufaula, and the Arkansas River below Keystone Dam.

Lake Texoma, in southern Oklahoma, is best known as a place to catch a lot of small stripers, but in the wintertime, you can catch some big ones. Here's a quick look at those great waters, along with some special insight on how to find and catch giant stripers in cold weather.

LOWER ILLINOIS
Most anglers believe trout are the key to finding and catching stripers below Lake Tenkiller -- but that's not entirely true. Stripers do love to eat trout, but current flow and water temperature are the two main factors that determine striper movements in the Tenkiller tailwater. Gary Peterson, district fisheries biologist for the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation, said the last two years have been phenomenal for striper fishing in the Lower Illinois, and current from Lake Tenkiller is the secret.

"The last two years we've had the water flows that have drawn stripers into the Lower Illinois, all the way to the dam at certain times," Peterson said.

Those stripers that come to the dam are the ones that confiscate the Zebco 33 rigs from the trout fishermen. "It happens," Peterson said. "We hear about it from time to time."

Peterson added that stripers ranging from 28 to 30 pounds are fairly common in the Lower Illinois. They spend periods of low water flow in the Arkansas River watershed in Kerr Reservoir, he said, but when the generators start running at Tenkiller Dam, the current pulls them into the Lower Illinois.

"In the early to mid-1990s, we put transmitters in stripers," Peterson said. "The lower 2 to 3 miles of the Lower Illinois held a fair number of stripers year 'round. They were always there, but the rest of them moved in and out of Kerr. Stripers travel all over the place, and once they're in the (Arkansas) river system, they can theoretically travel all the way to Keystone, in Tulsa."