We’re narrowing in now on the last hours of practice for the 2023 St. Croix Bassmaster Open at Lake Eufaula, Oklahoma. Spanning 105,500 acres and with 800 miles of shoreline, Eufaula Lake just south of Tulsa is quite the playing field. Few in the field know it’s waters as well as Austin Cranford. We caught up with Cranford to give us an update on how practice is going so far.
“I’ve said for a long time, this is one of the best tournament lakes in the country,” stated Cranford. “You can do whatever you want, except for fish grass. We don’t have any grass.”
Not only is the fishery diverse in cover, with docks, rocks and wood all over, but it is also massive. There are tributaries flowing in from all sides and fish up shallow as well as out deep.
“It’s a very good pattern lake. Each area kind of has a pattern of its own. You run 10 miles and it’ll look completely different. Different water colors. The fish setup different. You pick a section of it and it’s its own lake.”
With so much water to choose from, and multiple patterns in play, picking where to spend their time will be the biggest challenge angler’s face this week.
“It’s kind of going to be the battle of the deep guys and the shallow guys. You can win either way. I really think that the guy that wins is going to do both. I think you’re going to have to. I don’t think it’s going to be dominated one way or the other. The Top 10 will probably be half and half, shallow and deep guys.”
The fish are fully post-spawn at this point according to Cranford. But that doesn’t mean they are all offshore. Eufaula is historically a very muddy fishery, which keeps lots of fish shallow even in the summer. But this year, Cranford expects the deep bite to play a bigger role than usual.
“I honestly think that the lake is fishing better than it has in the past couple years because of the water clarity. I haven’t really talked to a lot of guys about how their practices are going. But from what I’ve seen today, they’re biting pretty good.”
Though the area has seen quite a bit of rain in the last two weeks, and throughout official practice, the water clarity as a whole is far better than it has been in years past.
Clarity is key
“For the last 10 years, the average clarity of the lake has been about 6 inches. I went pretty far down the lake where it’s usually pretty dirty, and you could see two foot down. It’s wild.”
Not fully sure what to attribute the clearer than normal conditions to, Cranford didn’t ask questions and instead simply adjusted to the unexpected shift in conditions.
“The current water clarity is allowing fish to get on places besides the bank. Historically, this is a bank-beater tournament. Usually, there’s a couple areas where you can catch them offshore, but it’s kind of opened the whole lake up.”
In the areas where the majority of the fish have traditionally stayed shallow, Cranford has found several fish offshore. The clearer water has allowed the bass to push out and still be able to feed. Though there are certainly still some bass on the bank as well.
“You can do both in those areas now so it’s kind of opened it up. The water clarity right now is the big key to this tournament. I can’t believe in some of these areas how deep the fish have gotten. There’s places that I fished today, that have had 3- to 4- inches of visibility in the past three years. I haven’t seen it any clearer than that. And they have 2- feet of visibility now.”
The effect of recent rains
Although the fishery as a whole is much cleaner than it has been in the past, heavy rains the last few days are certainly going to slip some curveballs in on the anglers.
“The water level really hasn’t done anything. You gotta have quite a bit of water come in to change this place. If we do get a bunch of water, which we might, it will muddy up a lot of stuff. And this lake will get real muddy.”
Though it takes torrential rain to raise the water level or affect the clarity of this massive lake as a whole, a localized deluge can certainly wreck an area of Eufaula in a hurry.
“There’s a bunch of rivers coming into it. Heck there’s probably 7 or 8 of them. Some of them get really muddy and some of them don’t.”
Knowing which river turns red with a little rain and which doesn’t is key when practicing here, a bit of local knowledge that Cranford had no reason to share. But he did offer up one example in particular.
“North of I40, that is the Canadian river. It is the worst out of all of them. If we get any rain, it’ll be blood red. So I’m assuming it’s blood red up there. That’s the worst one out of all of them. There’s a couple other ones that it’ll muddy up but they clean up pretty quick.”
What’s it going to take
“You’re probably going to have to have 17, 18 a day to win. The weights are going to be pretty decent throughout the field. It’s not going to be very top heavy. It’s going to be pretty consistent throughout the field.”
Cranford credited the abundance of 3-pound-class fish for the high prediction in weights, predicting low 30s to make the Top 10 cut.
“If you’ve got 32 pounds (after two days), you’ve got a pretty good shot. There’s tons and tons of 3-pounders. And they’ve been done (spawning) for awhile. So, most of them have put on a little bit more weight since the post-spawn.”
Optimism abounds for Cranford, though he has only practiced one day (Monday) on Eufaula so far, having had another tournament on a different fishery over the weekend. He anticipated knowing more after more time on the water the next two days.
“I think the weights are going to be pretty decent. I caught quite a few fish today and there weren’t a whole lot of them that were skinny. They had been out, off the bed for a while, eating shad. For the most part, I think the weights are going to surprise some people.”
“This is going to be a fun tournament. There’s going to be a lot of limits. They’re biting.”
Tune in to bassmaster.com on Thursday morning to follow along as the 2023 St. Croix Bassmaster Open at Lake Eufaula, Oklahoma gets under way.
