Preview: Shooting for 22 at Texoma

The second day of the Sudden Death Round for the MLF Summit Select returns to Lake Texoma for six more pros to take a stab at the 22-pound target weight. The first three who reach 22 pounds will advance to the Championship Round.

These six anglers will be fishing the same exact zone as the first six anglers did previously. The zone is situated on the Washita side of Texoma near Kingston, Okla. The southern boundary of the zone is south of the railroad bridge, just below Alberta Creek. The western boundary of the zone is located at the mouth of the Washita River, near Aylersville. This leaves 8,600 acres of fishable water, including Glasses and Little Glasses Creeks, Catfish Bay, Willow Springs, Hog Pen Point, Alberta Creek and the Roosevelt Memorial Bridge (Hwy. 70) in play.

On day one of Sudden Death, two competitors reached the 22-pound target weight before the official fishing day ended. Today could be an even steeper climb to 22 pounds due to a good chance of thunderstorms in the forecast.

Competitors are staged in the Little Glasses Resort and Marina parking while the zone maps are being handed out.

Veteran pro Mark Rose is the first to receive his map and finds nothing on the map remotely familiar to him.

“Lake Texoma: I’ve never heard of it,” Rose said.

Florida pro JT Kenney, who was parked next to Rose, expressed disbelief.

“You’ve never heard of Lake Texoma?” Kenney belted out. “You’ve got to be kidding me!”

Rose maintained his position.

“Nope, it doesn’t ring a bell with me at all,” Rose responded. “Seriously, I don’t recall ever hearing that name before.”

“It looks good, though,” Rose said after perusing the map. “I like the way the contours lay out – it’s got some flatter points with nearby channels. It sort of reminds me of Lake Eufaula (Alabama), which is a good offshore lake. I’m always thinking about offshore potential, especially in May and June, so maybe I’ll find something that fits my style out there.” 

Kenney, on the other hand, was more than willing to boast about his knowledge of Lake Texoma.

“You see, I’m a student of the game,” Kenney said clearing his throat, as if delivering a commencement. “I’ve never been here, but I have actually heard of Lake Texoma before. Mostly because some of the best pros on the planet fished here about two years ago in a tournament called BASSfest that was part of the BASS Elite Series schedule. It was won by a fellow named Greg Hackney, flipping bushes in high water. And that’s your complimentary Texoma history lesson for the day.”

With lake levels now near normal, Kenney said combing docks for shad spawns would be first on his radar during the ride through.

“Let’s see, plan for the day…hmm,” Kenney pondered. “It’s May and I see marinas…that should keep me busy for the first period anyway.”

 “They set the target weight at 22 pounds so the they must think they live here,” he added.

Brandon Palaniuk remembers his experience on Texoma for BASSfest well because it started with a top five on day one and then ended with a 42nd place finish on day three. While scrolling through the mapping, he was pulling hard at the memories in his brain about specific docks in the zone.

“I’m pretty sure I practiced in some of this zone for that event,” Palaniuk recalled. “I don’t remember finding anything really special in here, but now the problem is trying to remember which docks I fished that looked good but really weren’t, so I don’t waste any time on them right off the bat this morning.”

“It’s funny, when we practice for regular tournaments, we only remember the places that were good,” he said. “We don’t remember places that we eliminated. It’s not like we say to ourselves, ‘I need to remember those three docks right there, because I never got a bite off of them.’ We just move on and forget about them. And from what I remember, this is one of those areas where I fished several stretches of docks that were pretty worthless and I would rather avoid them in favor of fishing something I’ve never fished before.”

Indeed, sometimes the only starting point an angler has in an MLF Sudden Death Round is not necessarily where the fish are, but where they’re not.