Guide Aaron Sharp shares his top Lake Texoma Striper Fishing Tips for live-bait and artificial lure anglers. Sharp Striper Guide Service uses live-bait more than lures, but we are always happy to share our tips with boat and bank anglers of Lake Texoma and beyond. We will have three categories of Lake Texoma Striper Fishing Tips. The first will be essential, common sense fishing tips that apply to both lure and bait anglers. The second category will be for live-bait anglers, and the third will be for artificial lures. Lake Texoma has 89,000 surface acres that hold the best Striper fishery in the world. Let’s dive into our Striper fishing tips and how anglers can put big fish in the net and enjoy this vast reservoir.

 

The Basics

 

1) Cover water on Lake Texoma. Striper angler’s most significant mistake on Lake Texoma and beyond is staying in one spot too long! Anglers mark fish on their electronics and fish hard for 2 hours without a Striped Bass coming to the net. The fish you are marking are not Striper, or they are not ready to eat. DO NOT stay in one spot for more than 20 minutes without catching a Striper. Look at another place and cover water.

 

2) Stay in the zone. If your electronics show fish at 20 feet, do not drop your lure or bait to 25 feet. You can mark fish from 15 feet to 25 feet on Lake Texoma, and anglers need to fish from 16 to 24 feet. Keep your offering in the Striper’s face, not 5 feet above or below.

 

3) Know your equipment. How many feet of line does your reel pull in per turn of the handle? Easy to get this information in your front yard. Get a tape measure and take the hooks off of a slab spoon. Pull out 30 feet of line with the hookless lure and lay it next to your tape measure. Make one rotation of the reel handle and measure the distance. Are you marking Striper on your electronics? The easiest way to learn your electronics is drifting into seagulls as they feed on shad being pushed to the surface by Striper. It is very hard not to fish, but take 10-15 minutes and look at your depth finder screen. That is what Striper look like on your electronics. 

 

4) Start early and stay late. Striper Fishing Lake Texoma is not easy. You have to put in your time, cover water, and at times get lucky. The warmer the weather, the earlier you should start. September is the peak of our Topwater Plug season, and we like to get to the first spot when its dark. Anglers that say you can not catch Lake Texoma Striper before sunup have never tried. Thirty minutes before sunup and as the sunsets are great opportunities to catch big Striper on Lake Texoma.

 

Lake Texoma Striper Fishing Tips for Live Bait

 

1) Start before daybreak. Don’t burn daylight catching threadfin and gizzard shad when you could be catching Striper. Look under marina lights and the back of coves.

 

2) Charge those batteries. A dead bait tank battery will ruin a live bait Striper Trip on Lake Texoma.  

 

3) Keep the bait fresh. Catch enough bait so you can change it often. Striper follow the shad, and the shad move around. Find the shad, and you find the Striped Bass on Lake Texoma.

 

4) Use rock salt and a defoaming agent. We like to add 1/2 to 1 cup of rock salt to every 10 gallons of water in our bait tank. Use Sure Life Shad Keeper and Foam Off in your bait tank.

 

5) Balance is the key. Water temperature and oxygen working together to keep bait fresh and feisty will increase your catch ratio for Lake Texoma Striper. Add a block of ice to your bait tank. Keeping your bait tank temperature 5-10 degrees cooler than the lake is crucial for great live bait. Try a diffusion stone to add oxygen to your bait tank.

 

6) Buy a quality bait tank with proper filters, pumps, and hoses to keep your gizzard and threadfin shad healthy and active.

 

7) Clean your bait tank filter often for each trip. Keeping shad scales out of your bait tank will extend the life of your threadfin shad.

 

8) Do not overfill your tank with shad. Too many shad in your bait tank is a problem. A 50-gallon bait tank can hold 200 three to five-inch Shad. Don’t overstuff the bait tank.

 

9) Close your tank lid when done getting shad. Keeping the top open will increase the water temperature and deplete oxygen levels.

 

10) Fill your tank with non-chlorinated water. You can find water conditioners at any big box store pet department that sells fish.

 

11) Always carry a spare cast net on your boat. If you hang up a cast net on a tree stump and don’t have a replacement, the live bait trip is over.

 

12) Know your cast net. You have five parts to a cast net; the hand line, the yoke, the mesh, the braille lines, and the lead line. Make sure you have the proper weight and mesh size. We like a 10 foot by 3/8″ mesh with 1.0 pound per foot cast net. Please check all cast net regulations. We will do another blog post on cast nets next month.

 

14A) Do not overweight your live bait Carolina Rig. Keep your live bait presentation as natural as possible. Your egg sinker should be light enough to keep your shad looking natural and in the strike zone.  

 

14) Do not over line your reels. We like a 15-20 pound monofilament line for live bait fishing for Lake Texoma Striper.  

 

15) Know your circle hooks. Overpowering threadfin shad with a big circle hook will make your presentation unnatural. We go as small as size four and up to a 2/0 circle hook.  

 

 

Lake Texoma Striper Fishing Tips for Artificial Lures

 

1) Dress your lure hooks for increased reaction stikes for Lake Texoma Striper.

 

2) Match the Hatch. If Striper are eating three-inch threadfin shad, do not throw a five-inch knife jig.

 

3) Lure Depth, Retrieve speed, and Cadence plays an essential part in your success on Lake Texoma. Fish your slab spoon or sassy shad through the Striper you are marking on your electronics. Fishing too high or too low will bring weak results. Slow down your presentation in the winter and speed it up in the summer. Vary your retrieve cadence. Retrieving a swimbait with the same style and speed on each cast looks unnatural. Let you lure dart, fall, bounce, and look erratic. Threadfin Shad do not swim at the same speed and depth all day long.

 

4) Replace your topwater plug treble hooks with inline hooks. Save your fingers and get rid of those treble hooks.

 

5) Pinch your barbs down on all hooks. A big hook in your hand or face will end your Lake Texoma Striper Fishing Trip. 

 

Lake Texoma Striper Fishing Tips Conclusions

 

Thanks for reading our blog post, Lake Texoma Striper Fishing Tips. We love to share our information with anglers, clients, and future customers. The best way to learn how to Striper Fish Lake Texoma is to hire a guide. We love to show clients what an excellent Striper fishery we have at Lake Texoma. We Striper Fish Lake Texoma all year long. Here is a great blog post on Lake Texoma Striper Fishing Seasons. Pick one or fish them all with us soon. For more information, please follow Lake Texoma Fishing Guides.

 

 

About Aaron Sharp

 

Lake Texoma Fishing Guide Aaron Sharp has fished this famous Striper impoundment since 2002.  Owner operator of sharpstriperguide.com and a full-time year-round Lake Texoma Charter Fishing Service.  He is a live-bait fishing genius and a lure guru on Lake Texoma.  Arron Sharp works out of Alberta Creek Marina and is the top-rated Lake Texoma fishing guides Kingston Oklahoma.  Sharp Striper Guide Service is fully insured and licensed to fish in Texas and Oklahoma.