Big Blue from Texoma
James Chapman of Blanchard, Jacob Pressley of Arlington, Texas and Andy Wilshire of Edmond landed this 86-pound blue catfish on a jug line Saturday at Lake Texoma.
Winter is the best time for blue cat fishing in Oklahoma. Big blues are caught at twice the rate in the winter as they are in the summer.
That’s a fact that Andy Wilshire of Edmond does not need to be convinced of. While jug fishing for blue cats at Lake Texoma last weekend with three friends, they landed an 86-pound blue catfish.
“This is the biggest fish that any of us have ever seen, much less caught,” Wilshire said. “And odds are that this will be the biggest we catch or see for the rest of our lives.”
Wilshire, along with James Chapman of Blanchard and Conrad Cobb and Jacob Pressley, both of Arlington, Texas, were fishing an area about three miles west of the 377 bridge.
“We set our line of 20 jugs baited with fresh shad around 7:30 a.m. Saturday,” Wilshire said. “When we went to run the lines around 12:30 p.m. we noticed that the No. 2 jug was missing.
“We ran all the other jugs and then began looking for the missing jug. We found the jug about ½-mile north of where it was originally set. After a good battle with the fish on the jug, we finally pulled it into a boat.”
The anglers traveled back to Lake Texoma Marina to take pictures and weigh the fish, which they later released.
“Once in the water for a few minutes he became very lively again and we decided to let the trophy go to fight another day,” Wilshire said. “I hope by others seeing this and hearing our story that they will feel compelled to help the trophy blue cat population in our state by catching and releasing these beautiful beasts.”
Two years ago, the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation issued a regulation where anglers could only keep one blue catfish 30 inches or longer per day. That limit was imposed to help protect the population of trophy blues like the 86-pounder.
“Those big fish are very old and kind of rare,” said Gene Gilliland, assistant chief of fisheries for the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation.
Blue catfish feed more though the winter than their cousins, channel cats and flathead catfish, and stay more active. They have become a popular wintertime pursuit for Oklahoma anglers.
Why do blue cats bite better in the winter?
“They school up a little tighter and I think the forage, the shad they are feeding on, tends to be a little more concentrated,” Gilliland said. “I think that is a big part of it. It’s just a matter of locating fish.”
Creel surveys show that several Oklahoma lakes have an abundance of blue catfish but they grow very slowly. That’s why state wildlife officials imposed the one-fish daily limit for blue cats 30 inches or longer. And if you think that is a big catfish, the biggest blue ever caught in the state was 118 pounds. It was also landed on a jug line at Lake Texoma in 1988.
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