Crappie and paddlefish report
Caleb Swickey of Enid with a Salt Fork River spoonbill or paddlefish
The paddlefish are running and the crappie are biting.
Crappie are spawning on Lake Eufaula, Oklahoma’s most popular crappie hole. On the south side of the lake, crappie are on the bank . “They are sacking them up in all of the creeks,” said Gary Griffin, owner of the Lakeview Grocery Store on Lake Eufaula. “Now is the time to go.”
Another good crappie lake is Lake Thunderbird near Norman where a lake record slab was caught on Saturday.
Jereme Fortune of Moore caught a 2.9-pound crappie while slip-corking in the Twin Bridges area. The Denver Corner Pantry serves as the lake record keeper for Thunderbird
In northeastern Oklahoma, the paddlefishing is nearing its peak.
“It’s prime,” said Keith Green of the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation. “We’ve probably got about two weeks of really good fishing. It’s as prime as it is going to get in the next two weeks.”
The paddlefish are in the river systems six miles either direction of Twin Bridges State Park on Grand Lake, where the Wildlife Department has its cleaning and processing station, Green said.
Anglers with boats have been snagging them with success but the Neosho River through Riverview City Park in Miami has been too low for bank fishing, Green said.
After the next big rain on the Neosho River 100 miles upstream in Kansas, it will be a great time to fish in the public park from the bank, he said.
The biggest paddlefish checked in this spring at Twin Bridges has been 68.9 pounds.
Anglers can call the processing center at Twin Bridges (918-542-9422) to get a paddlefish report. The center is closed on Fridays and Mondays as those are catch and release days only for paddlefish. The daily limit is one the rest of the week.
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Eddie just curious does paddlefish have scales?