# What do you think?



## shadslinger (Aug 21, 2005)

Where are the stripers? Have most, if not the majority left the island to feed elsewhere? Did a fish able population stay around if they did leave, like white bass?
Where will they go when the spawn starts? How will we catch them when if they don't school on top?
Ah heck, let's throw in what is the meaning of life?
Seriously, these are burning questions in my mind. I'm going to make the shift, like I do most years to cat fishing, crappie, and white bass up the lake/river/creeks coming soon, but my old addiction to stripers has gotten a new grip on me. 
There are more in the lake than ever, and it's harder for me to launch in the river since they diverted the flow down the middle and it clears out quick, so I can't get my fix there like I have in the past.
So where are all those bad boy stripers that live in the lake? 
There are so many great fishermen who contribute to this board, escepially regarding white bass and stripers, and I would really like to know your opinon. PM me if you want to keep it discrete. 
Did anyone fish for white/stripes today or yesterday?
SS


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## lx22f/c (Jun 19, 2009)

I took my brother and we went chasing the white bass up on the 190 road bed, we ended up with 25 whites and 3 blues. All of the white bass were nice size caught them just west of the river per meadowlarks recent post. did not catch any stripers we tried a little trolling around the river channel just following it for awhile because i saw alot of big schools of fish on the edges of the river but they were in 40 ft of waterand it was just to rough to try and jig .there was alot of bird s working the area while we were out there never saw anything bust the top but we also saw alot of gaspergou along the surface i never seen that many like that on livingston. i to have the striper fever, since we went to lake quachita in arkansas and we caught some nice 15 lb stripers i have a quest to find some that big on livingston. i think they have moved to the river chanels right nowand have broken off in smaller groups which makes finding them that much harder. i will try againnext weekend maybe just trolling some deep diving lures right down the river from the dam to the190 bridge and just see what happens.


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## dbullard (Feb 13, 2008)

Sorry SS I did not study for this test !!LOL I am ready for some drifting .I also brought my bridge anchors home to work on them.


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## ensignjason (Jan 8, 2007)

Stripers should be fairly easy to locate this time of the year---Bait moves in shallow early so look for ambush points and focus on them. You can follow birds if they are there but you are usually going to have a lot of company and the fish are going to be lacking in quality--at least at Texoma, T-wok, LL(hybrids) and BB(hybrids again) Quality fish (stripers more so than hybrids) dont want to chase schools of bait with the dinks so I do well working points and coves with wildeyes and jerk baits--again this is just what works for me--I would rather catch 10 monster fish in a day that 100 dinks.


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## shadslinger (Aug 21, 2005)

I'll take 1 big striper over 25 white bass! Good info ensignjason, I'll put it in my bag o tricks.


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## fishinganimal (Mar 30, 2006)

Seems to me the fall and rise off the lake has gotten the fish moving deep. This is more of the pattern in the past years. I think drifting structure and humps along the river channel will be the key to target stripers. The high water and flow has spread the shad out and sent alot through the dam. Schoolin is probably over for now. I am hittin the coast next weekend but will hit the lake the following weekend. Keep me posted.


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## shadslinger (Aug 21, 2005)

FA, the key to where they are does seem to be where the shad are, and I think that is a good analysis of what has happened to them. In the past I have caught big stripers drifting the hump with live perch. I'm going today to see if live shad will work with that method there. Post report later. ensigjason, if the shad are up shallow it seems the island would still be paying off, so i'm hitting it frist thing. Maybve the recent changes in water levels etc, has the shad scattered like FA stated and they may have regrouped there.


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## RAYSOR (Apr 26, 2007)

Great post SS, got me to thinking that every time that I have been hunting the stripers down they are usually schooled up around a Redfin boat with a couple of guys named Loy and Lee, hope this info helps you, LOL


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## Meadowlark (Jul 19, 2008)

Predator fish always follow the forage, in my experience, and if you find the forage in a place where the predators can easily get to them, that's where they will be.

I've been out-of-the loop this weekend and think I'll run down to the dam and try that for awhile this morning....assuming the weather cooperates. Some heavy rains around Conroe and headed in our direction.


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## bigfost (Oct 11, 2004)

shadslinger said:


> I'll take 1 big striper over 25 white bass!


I see you're adopting my saltwater philosophy. LOL!


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## shadslinger (Aug 21, 2005)

Yep Bigfost, it's all about the fight! Meadowlark I almost called you to see if you want to go. then i remembered i have to go look for some crappie up Kickapoo for some folks. I drove to the gezeebo and saw Mattsfishn tearing up the white bass, called him and he was almost to a limit with 1 striper to boot. i watched the stripers school up in long rod range pretty good. I hope you go and get them. Meanwhile I decided to wait untill my water pump kit gets in before i go anywhere else in the Red-Fin. if you are still up to go in the tailrace later i would go.


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## Sunbeam (Feb 24, 2009)

Looks like another season of "gate yoyo" There is a big 12,000+cfs slug in the river from Ennis to Corsacana. The river is rising quickly at Oakwood and Crocket. We should see some increase in the tailrace later this week.

As to the stripers, are you catching any 16/17 inch stripers below the dam. If so they came from the lake. There is no successful spawning in the lower Trinity and those fingerlings stocked last July would not be over 5" long.


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## Mattsfishin (Aug 23, 2009)

There was a bunch of 14 to 17 inch stripers down there today.

Matt


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## Meadowlark (Jul 19, 2008)

Sunbeam said:


> As to the stripers, are you catching any 16/17 inch stripers below the dam. If so they came from the lake. There is no successful spawning in the lower Trinity and those fingerlings stocked last July would not be over 5" long.


Yep, Sunbeam, you hit that nail right on the head. I caught some stripers today that I swear must have just come out of the lake....they were those 17. 95 inchers that are so common in the lake....some smaller, of course, but those 17 inch + stripers are fresh from the lake, I'm betting.


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## Meadowlark (Jul 19, 2008)

shadslinger said:


> Meadowlark I almost called you to see if you want to go. then i remembered i have to go look for some crappie up Kickapoo for some folks.


Dang, I thought you were headed to Pine Island with live shad today?

Otherwise, I would have called you. The stripers were really cutting up just out of my range....but I didn't see many big ones caught surprisingly and some guys were trying with the long rods.

Very shallow now in places...only about a foot clearance just out from the ramp.


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## shadslinger (Aug 21, 2005)

Yeah when I went back to the ramp Friday the Red-Fin was digging mud, and Saturday it over heated for the first time ever. so I went online and bought a water pump kit, and blew off the lake until it is repaired. No need in blowing a power head because of not putting a $130.00 water pump kit!
let's go soon.
Friday when i went back i figured out what i had been doing wrong that morning, working the bait fast and even slow would not do it. That evening i watched until i saw it was a matter of letting the cork float back with no action at all and one would pick it up.


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## Kody Emmert (Oct 5, 2007)

I haven't been fishing Livingston that long but with my experiences with the Stripers from the Highland Lakes, when the lake begins to rise from rain, all of the shad tend to move up into the upper end/mouth of the lake to spawn.... The Stripers usually aren't far behind. I think that the fish definately get into smaller schools, but saying that, when you catch a quality fish out of the school, all of the fish in the school are usually the same size or bigger. When fishing Buchanan, I would always concentrate around the North end of the lake on the backside of islands and in coves early in the mornings. The stripers would still come up like the do in the summertime just not as often or as long.... then the depth finder goes to work, I would move back into the river channel and drift across the edge in 60-70 foot of water. The stripers always seemed to stack on the timber along the river channel and I could always pull at least 2-3 good ones off of a school just drifting shad. I don't know if Livingston has any of the same structure (im sure it does) but the big stripers always seem to sit in the timber or right in the river channel to ambush baits. They always used to use the wind to their advantage in the fall as well.... I always saw them pushing shad onto windblown points and into coves. Hope my little bit of information helps.... I'm dying to get the boat back onto the lake, but i have just been to busy with football.

Kody


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## shadslinger (Aug 21, 2005)

Thanks to all for their input, Kody many of us on Livingston have had a hard time transferring methods from other striper lakes to Livingston. The nature of the lake appears to make it very different form deeper striper lakes. I do think what you had to say is going to turn out to be the trick for us in the coming months, we will just have to figure out the specifics to doing it on our lake. 
In the far past I used to my family to the White rock Brigde at old Galloways marina and we would fish from the caueway bank.
We would get into some great white bass, very big ones, and an occassional, striper casting live shad out into the channel.
I have catfished up lake with a friend and found a school that behaved just as you described along the river channel in some timber.
As soon as my boat gets it's new water pump kit installed i think going up the lake, and sunbeam especially after learning of a new slug coming down the pike will the thing to do.
Meadowlark and I have talked about the shad moving and game fish following them alot recently, and he gave us that info here on this post too.
So in theroy and, by the experience of 2coolers who fished other more well known striper lakes, they should bemarcing up the lake with the shad and white bass.

Kody's info about finding them in windblown coves etc, where the shad get concentrated by wind, jives very well with I learned on the island this summer.
When the wind blew for 2 days or more from the smae coordinate the stripers would _almost_ always be on the wind blown corner of the island when they feed.

Great input 2coolers, now if we tear ourselves away from the awesome fishing at the dam, we might hunt them down on the lake.
SS


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## dbullard (Feb 13, 2008)

SS there was plenty of shad pushed way back in the cove from the ne wind Friday.
That river channel might be the ticket as it starts cooling down.
There is a big bend in the river just up from where we caught stripers last winter we may need to look at.If the stripers don't play I am sure the cats will be there.


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## shadslinger (Aug 21, 2005)

Sounding like avery good plan to hit that spot and area again. I'm ready. I went back and found those stripers again after going with you but could not get anchored right to fish them in my boat.


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## wwind3 (Sep 30, 2009)

I'm curious as to where the stripers below the dam go when the water flows are very low.

There is a guide who fishes the Brazos below Possum Kingdom who catches huge stripers and largemouths from a kayak.

I would assume the fishery below Livingston is a year round thing but where do they go in varying water conditions?


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## Sunbeam (Feb 24, 2009)

*wwind3, below is portion of a post I did back in July. It is from an article in the Chronicle.*
*TP&W are several years into an extensive study of the stripers in the lower Trinity. They are especially concerded as to the effect the new hydro project at Livingston will have on their ability to harvest brood fish every spring.*

*Quote*
*Keeping tabs with tags
*In conjunction with a study on movement and habitat preferences of alligator gar in the Trinity River, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department inland fisheries researchers have for almost a year monitored movements of about 50 *striped* *bass* in the lower, undammed section of the river.
Those 50 stripers - ranging in size from about 18 inches to more than 25 pounds - were caught in the river (most just downstream from the Lake Livingston Dam), fit with small, internal radio transmitters, and released back into the waterway.
Each transmitter emits a unique frequency that identifies the individual fish. 
TPWD has placed a picket of underwater receivers - one each 15 miles or so - along the 110-mile stretch of the Trinity River from just below the Livingston Dam to the *Wallisville* area near where the river empties into Trinity Bay.
The receiver records the date and time any transmitter-fit fish passes the location. Researchers hope to learn when, where and how far the stripers move, if water level and flow rates affect that movement and which particular habitats are most attractive to the *striped* *bass*. 
While the research is ongoing, the tagged stripers have yielded some interesting insights.
"One of the things we've seen is that *striped* *bass* tend to move a lot - at least a lot more than gar," said Dave Buckmeier, fisheries researcher at TPWD's Heart of the Hills Fisheries Science Center, who is heading the alligator gar/striped *bass* project. "Some of the *striped* *bass* run the whole river. We've had several fish that have moved from the Livingston Dam to *Wallisville* and back."
And the fish sometimes make the trip in just a few days. 
Some of the tagged fish almost certainly go into the Galveston Bay system and perhaps even into the near shore Gulf, Buckmeier said. Over the past few years, it has not been unusual for anglers fishing Trinity Bay during autumn and winter to see occasional flurries of *striped* *bass*. 
Researchers are particularly interested in learning where the stripers in the river tend to congregate. Information could show the researchers certain habitats the fish need to survive.
Unquote
Note: I spoke to Buckmeir. He said it was Nate's project.


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## Kody Emmert (Oct 5, 2007)

That is a really interesting read Sunbeam, I have always been curious as to see where the stripers congregate in the river....


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## wwind3 (Sep 30, 2009)

Interesting read---thanx. So we have crabs going up the river into fresh water, stripers going from fresh water to salt water and back. Confusing...

Nature is amazing..


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