Back from deer camp
Jeff has been away with family over the holidays and deer hunting in Kansas. The family has had a great deer season, continuing the luck from bear season. From now until January 15 is one of his favorite times to be in the woods. Oklahoma has a secondary rut when many yearling does get bred. If you're lucky, "old mossy horns" will run out in front of you. Find a good food source when it gets cold (corn, acorns or whatever you're hunting over) and you can have a lot of deer come in.
Conditions
Fishing reports from Grand Lake are good. The water is extremely clear and stable. Windy weather is coming later this week, with a little chance of rain over the weekend.
Crappie in the docks
Enough cold weather has come to really bunch up the Crappie. They're often in really deep brush piles or the darkest places in marinas and big docks. If you have access to marina docks (or pay for it), or know someone with a good dock with covered slips in deeper water, now until pre-spawn is when you can really sack them up. There hasn't been a shad kill yet, so Crappie, Catfish and Bass are all feeding up hard.
Crappie reports
John (Lewis) has been catching some really nice Crappie on 2-inch soft-plastic jigs. Haydn with Williams Guide Service and his girlfriend Haley caught two limits in docks on the south end. He said it didn't really matter which jig color they used. Haydn fried up the Crappie for Haley's daughter's birthday party, and it's hard to beat fresh Crappie out of cold Grand Lake water. "That's life's simple pleasures right there."
Catfish
The GrandFishingReport.com Facebook group has posts of some really nice Catfish around Sailboat Bridge, a couple of them over 40 pounds, possibly caught from the bank.
Paddlefish
Guides are getting a lot of Paddlefish. Haydn plans to be snagging over the weekend as he gets back to guiding. If you've never snagged Paddlefish, hire one of the lake's guides and learn how. Grand Lake is just about the premier place in the country to snag them. Some lakes have bigger fish, but very few places in the U.S. have a Paddlefish population like ours.
White Bass / Twin Bridges
With clear water and no inflow on the Neosho, Jeff expects people to start catching boatloads of White Bass on the Neosho and Spring River any day now. Over many Christmas breaks he has caught a lot of Crappie and White Bass in clear water at Twin Bridges.
Lake Hudson
No news from below the dam, but at the headwaters of Lake Hudson, look for brush piles and old submerged wood along the Grand River channel in 10 to 20 feet. You can catch some big Black Crappie on the upper end of Hudson right now.