The winter months are trophy months. The stripers bite year-round and fatten up in the cold months. January and February, we trophy hunt. The larger stripers are rogue fish. They are like a big buck deer; they don’t run with the crowds. We run routes and fish structure with a big RoadRunner jig. We tip it with a 9-inch white worm trailer. Hence, big baits = big fish. When we say structure, we target main lake points, mouths of creeks, ditches, and humps. There may be up to 5 big fish holding on to the structure, and they ambush baits. Fish up to 20 pounds can be captured in the winter. 

March is the beginning of Spring fishing on Lake Texoma. The lake starts warming up. The fish begin to gather in schools. Spring may be the most popular of all four seasons. Fishermen have cabin fever and are ready to get outdoors and catch some fish. March, April, and May are the primetime Spring months. As the lake warms, the fishing heats up. Multiple hookups are common. That is when an angler yells, “I got one,” and it dominoes down the boat and everyone on board has a hungry sassy striper on the line. Late April is the beginning of the top-water action. This is the most exciting fishing of all.

We cast big 6-inch plugs on the shallow banks and the stripers explode on your offering. What happens is the bait moves in the shallow water and the fish follow. Your plug simulates a crippled bait on the surface. Anytime your plug is in the water you are in the strike zone. We have stories of fish attacking your plug at the side of the boat. This is not for the faint of heart. We cast the shallow banks at first light in the early mornings. The top-water fishing will last for an hour or longer depending on cloud cover. After the top-water action is over we switch to jigs and or slabs. A slab is a lead spoon you fish vertically. We locate the schools with our electronics. The stripers are grouped up and roaming the lake in search of shad, the main food forage of stripers. The Spring season will last till the end of May.

The Summer season begins in June on Lake Texoma. The stripers have finished spawning. They come back from up rivers and are entering the main lake. Hundreds of thousands of hungry fish begin running all over the lake. They group up in large schools, and it starts with slab fishing. This is when we locate the fish and vertically fish. We drop the slabs over the side of the boat, let it fall to the bottom, and reel up fast.

The fish can range from 1 pounder to double digits; 10 pound plus stripers are common. About mid-June, the fish start surfacing. This is the traditional top-water sight fishing. We cast the 6-inch top-water plugs on the feeding fish. You can see the fish busting shad from long distances. What is happening in the schools of fish find huge bait balls. They scare the bait to the water’s surface and explode on the shad. The shad can run, but it cannot hide. This action will last for a couple of hours then they sound. That means the fish will stay grouped up and keep feeding. We drop slabs and “rip” them up. The striper strikes so hard they can take the rod out of your hands. Some schools of fish can be a quarter of a mile wide and a mile long. Texoma has a massive population of stripers due to historical reproduction. The Summer action will last until the first of September.

The Fall fishing on Texoma is as popular as the Spring season.  The lake is cooling down from the heat of Summer, and the fish love it. The fish move up on the flats in September. They come from the deep water and chase shad in shallower depths. September is a great month for numbers of fish. We cast jigs and bump the slabs on the bottom. Then in October, we cast the shallow banks with top-water plugs like in May. We have a new fishfinder in October. Thousands of seagulls migrate to the lake for the season. The birds, as we call them locate fish when the stripers push the shad to the surface. The topwater fishing will continue till mid-November. The water cools and we follow the birds. The stripers are schooling under the birds. Again, you can slab the fish vertically or cast jigs for great action and multiple hookups. The same patterns continue through December.

December is our second favorite fishing month on Texoma. Decembers aren’t as cold as they used to be, And it’s Fall-like temperatures. There must be a zillion seagulls on the lake locating fish for you. There is a year of fishing the seasons on Lake Texoma. The best fishing lake in the whole wide world.  Thanks for reading our blog post, Bill Carey Striper Express Lake Texoma Fishing Seasons.  For more information please follow Lake Texoma Fishing Guides.