Striped bass, hybrid bass, white bass and catfish are starting to move in a fall pattern as inland lakes continue to cool. Schooling action for stripers, hybrids and sandbars is taking place in certain bodies of water, while others have produced more inconsistent results. Guides at Lake Whitney, Lake Buchanan and Lake Possum Kingdom have been able to catch anglers.
Dan White landed this striped bass while fishing Lake Whitney with guide Cory Vinson. Photo by Cory Vinson.
In Lake Whitney, Cory Vinson said stripers are concentrated in shallow water in depths of 15 feet or less.
“Blind casting in the shallows with topwater lures has been the ticket,” Vinson said. “Drawling live shad through shallow areas has also caused a lot of strikes.”
Vinson says the fish aren’t stacked.
“You’ll catch one or two here and then cover a stretch of 100 yards or so before you get a few more bites,” he explained. “Putting fish in the box has been as simple as covering the shallows thoroughly. It doesn’t take long to catch them if you stay on the move.”
Vinson said Whitney is loaded with major bands.
“We’re catching a few over 30 inches regularly, but there are definitely more fish in the 18- to 25-inch range,” he said. “There’s only a ton of 4- to 5-pound stripers out there, but fish over 15 pounds haven’t been uncommon.”
At Lake Buchanan, Fermin Fernandez said stripers are schooling fairly regularly alongside hybrids and white bass daily.
“The fish have been schooling for several hours every morning,” Fernandez said. “If for some reason we don’t find them chomping at the surface right away, you can almost bet they’ll be suspended below the surface in the same areas where they were schooling the day before.”
Trolling A-rigs with 4-inch swimbaits has been Fernandez’s favorite tactic to target these schools of stripers, hybrids and white bass, along with jigging casting spoons.
“There’s really no particular structure that they’re schooling on,” Fernandez said. “It’s almost strictly an open water deal. They’re chasing shad, and we’ve got a lot of shad in Buchanan. Recently, I’ve seen schools of fish chasing shad that were as big as a couple of acres.”
Schooling action has been best when there is a steady breeze.
“They’ve been closed when it’s calmed down,” he said.
Most of the conservative fish caught in these schools are hybrids weighing about 3 pounds. At Possum Kingdom, TJ Ranft said the striper bite has been a little tricky. “We’ve been chasing stripers in the early hours of each morning and then we’ve been focusing on catfish,”
Ranft said. “There just hasn’t been consistency in the stripe pattern. They seem to be moving all over the place and not staying in one area for long.”
When chasing stripers, live shad have produced the most bites.
“I’ve been catching stripers in 15 to 40 feet of water,” Ranft said. “You never know where they’re going to be. Most of them are at pretty small schools.”
After the striper bite dies down, Ranft has been finding 2- to 5-pound blue cats with about 10 to 15 pounds mixed in, using cut shad in 2 to 15 feet of water.