Professional Statistician and Forecaster Benjamin Moore is Doing a Number on Texoma Stripers
Part One of a Two-Part Series
I get photos from Lake Texoma striper specialist Benjamin Moore on a wonderfully regular basis. If not for the affable angler from Grapevine, Texas, I wouldn’t know near as much about the big Oklahoma border lake’s propensity for producing striped bass … and specifically, the consistently impressive impact that Black Salty baitfish tend to have on the sprawling impoundment’s resident linesiders.
Ben and I have been corresponding for over a year now. It became apparent to me several months ago that Ben is a Renaissance Man of sorts, the kind of fellow who, when he finds a need for a product, is just as likely to invent it as he is to go out and attempt to locate it on a store shelf. His sophisticated, cooling-coil-outfitted custom baitwells and the angling electronics on his 22-foot Skeeter ZX Bay are solid and effective testimony in that regard.
After talking with Ben yesterday for no less than an hour (What can I say? We were talking fishing.) it became offshore-clear to me as to why Ben is such an industrious and methodical guy. He’s a professional statistician with serious academic credentials, and he approaches striper-fishing trips with much the same meticulous precision and aforethought he utilizes when creating detailed market forecasts for J.C. Penney’s corporate and website operations in Plano.
“I help handle the Internet business as well as www.JCP.com,” Moore told me. “I do ‘demand forecasting’ … checking growth trends, tracking the business and forecasting market demands … that sort of thing.” Based on the pictures he has sent me as of late, he’s pretty darned skilled at predicting fishing trends and forecasts as well. Moore has become quite the adept angling analyst on Lake Texoma throughout the last several years, and he now fishes the lake with an equally fishing-addicted friend and partner he linked up with through the popular interactive fishing website, www.texasfishingforum.com.
I’ve said it before; TexasFishingForum (or “TFF,” as we simply call it) is the best all-around interactive fishing-specific website in the Lone Star State.
You can quote me on that.
TFF Host J.P. Greeson does a magnificent job on the site just in terms of providing venues for communication and sharing of advice, techniques and hotspots. One really neat service, however, and one that arguably doesn’t get the play it deserves … especially due to its relevance in today’s fast-paced and often-impersonal society … is TFF’s “Partner Finder” forum.
That particular section of the site (listed with other forums under “Additional Topics”) eventually linked Moore with fisherman L.J. Bybee of Azle.
The two have arranged a mutual meeting point at which Moore’s Explorer takes on Bybee and his gear and the duo heads on north to Texoma. Or, in some instances, they move the trailer to Bybee’s Ford F-150 pickup, and Bybee does the boat-pulling and chauffering.
Either way, Moore assured me, it works out great.
“As a matter of fact, the whole program with me and L.J. is great,” he explained. “We’re serious fishermen, but we have serious fun while we’re at it.”
Seeing as how the two recently-acquainted striper specialists have in the past couple of months alone made around 10 trips to Texoma, that’s an understatement. Most fishermen don’t make that many outings in a year.
Got a boat? Don’t have a boat, but looking for someone who does, who will let you come aboard if you’ll pay your share of fuel and trip costs? Looking for, perhaps even, the makings of a friendship … which, from what I can tell, is something Moore and L.J. have come to develop in a short span of time?
Check out www.TexasFishingForum.com. Scan the forums for the kind of fishing that interests you. Then, if you’d like to check out the possibility of gaining a fishing partner, post a notice on the Partner Finder forum.
It’s a really, really neat deal.
Then again, so is the way these guys have been catching fish.
NEXT: “From 30 feet down, I own the water” …The Black Salty’s extended deep-water comfort zone, the exclusivity it affords, six rods down at once and a 33-inch, 22-pound Texoma linesider that now ranks as Bybee’s largest career fish.
Howdy. I am 
