My brother-in-law was telling me that Lake Livingston has stripers. Has anyone had any luck there and if so whats the best thing to use? Thanks in advance.

Yes, Livingston has stripers. I've fished for them pretty hard the last three years and here's some things I've learned:

1) Livingston is NOT a top striper lake. The combination of sustained high water temps and water chemistry just about insures that the stripers do not often survive over 30 inches.

2) Having said #1 above, Livingston can produce some really fun fishing for small (16 to 18 inches) to medium (19 to 29 inches) stripers.

3) Most of the stripers are actually caught as incidental catch on Livingston, i.e. they are usually caught by folks fishing for white bass and sometimes by those fishing for blue cats. I actually target stripers and as far as I know very few people actually do this on Livingston on any regular basis because you can have some tough days....days in which you could have caught a ton of white bass but may end up with only one or two stripers or zero stripers.

4) They can be caught jigging, trolling, or on live bait...but by far the most reliable way to get stripers is to find them schooling. In summer they will run in fairly large surface schools for brief periods. They often run in similar size packs, i.e. 18 inch fish can dominate one school and 24 inch plus can dominate another.

One of the biggest problems with the schools are other anglers who are not experienced at striper fishing on the lake. The striper surface schools generally are extremely sensitive to running boats. They will sound in an instant when they pick up that engine/boat sound. Many(most) people either do not understand that or don't care and just charge after them thereby eliminating the opportunity for all.

When you can find the conditions right, including no other boats nearby or at least only one or so boats who are experienced anglers and familiar with these fish, you can have some tremendous fishing....but I have to say those days are the exception not the rule.

Thanks for the info. My brother-in-law usually goes to Lake Whitney for the stripers,but his biddy just got a boat so we are going to try Livingston out. That and it's alot closer to us than Whitney.

You definitely should try them out. Today was not typical of Livingston...but it does show that you can have a blast catching the stripers there. In three hours fishing this afternoon racked up 17 Stripers from 19 inches to 23 inches and 25 solid white bass. Kept only the first 5 stripers.


The first picture is of the first 5, then number 15, number 16, and number 17.