Fort Cobb Lake great day trip

One of the best fishing and recreation lakes in Southwest Oklahoma lies just an hour north of Lawton near the town of Fort Cobb. Impounded in 1958, as a part of the Washita Basin Project, the main source of water for the lake is Cobb Creek.

At normal pool elevation, Fort Cobb reservoir is about 7 miles long, has a current storage capacity of 73,800 acre-feet, a surface area of 4,300 acres (6 square miles), a mean depth of 19 ft, a maximum depth of around 60 ft., and a shoreline length of about 45 miles.

Currently the lake is full, so anglers should have plenty of great shoreline and structure to fish.

“Fort Cobb has no standing timber remaining in the basin, and many of the sandy banks are eroded,” said Ryan Ryswyk, fisheries supervisor for the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation.

Shoreline willows and cottonwoods are flooded occasionally, providing temporary shallow cover for fish. Fort Cobb supports little aquatic vegetation since 1982, when high water and a Eurasian milfoil control project combined to eliminate its extensive cattails and milfoil beds.

“Transplantings of native water willow and bulrush by the ODWC have taken root in a handful of coves in the upper end,” said Ryswyk. “Extensive natural beds of sago pondweed were noted in the shallows at Fort Cobb in a survey during the summer of 2009.”

Sand and sandstone are the primary substrates in most of the lake. The dam and some shorelines in the State Park are lined with rock rip-rap, and sandstone points and drop-offs provide some fishing habitat. Siltation is common from erosion in the watershed, and deltas formed in upper coves are quickly populated by willow trees.

According to Ryswyk, excessive nutrients result in dense algal blooms at Fort Cobb Reservoir, and gizzard shad are prolific. Because of this abundance of gizzard shad the lake is able to support excellent populations of open water species like hybrid striped bass, saugeye, and catfish. The lack of shallow cover in the lake however is negative for species like bass and sunfish, and instead favors open-water species like saugeye, catfish and hybrid striped bass.

If you have ever been to Fort Cobb, you know that the primary winds and wave action in summer are from the south, and with the lake running primarily north to south, that can make boating on Cobb difficult at times.

“It may be surprising but Fort Cobb was one of the best bass lakes last year, according to bass tournament data collected by the Wildlife Department.” Said Clayton Porter, SW fisheries biologist. “Angler tournament data reported it to have the 2nd highest weights of fish at weigh-ins in the state and our spring samples showed the same for numbers.”

Fort Cobb’s fertility makes fishing better-than-average, compared to other waters in western Oklahoma.

“Fort Cobb is probably my favorite place to fish in SW Oklahoma.” Said Porter. “It is hard to beat with its abundance of fat and healthy fish. In fact the current state record saugeye was caught there in 2006 by Curt Wilkerson.

Anglers should target saugeye on points and drop offs when fishing at Ft Cobb. One of the things that I enjoy about fishing there is you never know what you might catch when drifting a minnow over a point. It’s always a surprise when you set the hook as a channel catfish, blue catfish, hybrid striped bass, white bass, or the ever so tasty saugeye might be on the other end of your line.

Spring and early summer are the best times to catch hybrids and saugeye at Ft. Cobb. When the water starts to heat up in the summer these species begin to get harder to catch. At that point, it’s a good time to do some night fishing with cut shad to try and catch a few of the big blue and channel catfish that are our searching for food.

Fort Cobb also has really nice day use and camping areas, as well as a very nice golf course ran by the State Park System.