Fishing guide, Stephen Andre (903-786-4477) dead-sticks for stripers with great success on Lake Texoma, but the same method should pay off for Toledo Bend’s stripers. He started fishing for stripers with the dead-sticking method four years ago. “I think it was on Lake Tawakani where one of the guides came up with the method about five years ago and it kind of caught on.”
“Dead-sticking is a method where we use a fluke style bait, similar to a Sassy Shad. The tail on it isn’t a paddle style bait, but real thin, split tail. It doesn’t really have a whole lot of action if you were casting and retrieving it, but when the bait sits suspended in the water, its tail kind of undulates up and down. It makes for an easy target for the stripers.”
The jig head has the tie on the top instead in the front. “When you are dead sticking you want your bait to sit horizontal in a natural presentation. Baits don’t swim at weird angles; they typically swim horizontal.”
The Zoom Fluke he prefers for dead-sticking is five inches long. “It’s not a real wide body bait, but it has a little bit of meat to it at mid body. The tail tapers to a real thin tail, which has a split in it. You’re not casting, just drifting. We try to keep the boat speed less than a 1/2 mile per hour. Sometimes it’s difficult and you have to put drift socks out. The action of the boat drifting with the wind and wave action gives action to the bait.
“There is one specific color that is kind of our go-to color,” continues Andre. “The color that I start out with is called White Ice, kind of clear, white looking bait that has silver glitter in it. I dip the tail in chartreuse dye to get a little contrast. We have also caught them on a color called Baby Bass which is kind of green, metal flake color. Sometimes they like Bubble Gum which is a pink.
Sometimes, if they are real aggressive in the deeper water, you can put the rod in the rod holder on the boat and catch them. To me it seems better to hold the rod. The fish are kind of lazy and sometimes the bites are really, really light. If you have the rod in the rod holder you are not going to know you have a bite.”
He prefers braid or fluorocarbon line because it has less stretch and is more sensitive to a light bite.