Thread: What's the Deal With Keystone Lake

There was a major shad kill from the cold at Oologah Lake a few years ago. It was absolutely horrible and an unbelievable sight. The birds had a feast.

Sorry guys I really didn't mean to kill the fishing by pulling all those slabs out last spring.

Thanks Dinobot!

And another thanks to Dinobot!

Ditto, Dino. And double ditto on the Phil Robertson poster.

The blue cats went nuts!!!

It was only 9 degrees two nights in a row at CB, and there were very few shad floating, but I have seen pretty large kills during cold snaps at Hefner. The cold snaps and cormorants can be murder on the shad. Ever since PETA got the ban on killing cormorants, the fishing has deteriorated at many of the lakes. Some sources say that cormorants can eat five pounds of fish per day, but googling them indicates that one to one and one half pounds is average. Several years after the cormorant protection went into place, the Daily Oklahoman had a headline that said 9,000 cormorants had taken up residence on Lake Hefner. Those birds were there for seven weeks. I watched them eat tons of fish. Think about 9,000 birds times one pound times 49 days, or 441,000 pounds, or 220.5 TONS of fish. If they averaged 1.5 pounds per day, that is 331 tons. Before that time, 2 pounders were common, and Carl Jones and I were getting 2.5 pounders by slip corking during the winters. Since then, a 1.5 pound fish has been a BIG one.
Last year the cormorants took up residence on Guthrie Lake. 30 to 40% of the crappie that I caught had stab wounds. This year, all of the fish have been dinks.
The guys who fish cats at Ft. Cobb say that the shad balls have all been below thirty feet (trying to avoid the cormorants), and they are catching forty pound blues with stab wounds from the cormorants.
Now that I've ranted, were there a lot of cormorants on Keystone this past year?

Big sky I agree with the Hefner part because .haven't caught any good ones since!!!!