Lake Texoma in Texas is well known for it's heavy-bellied striped bass, catfish, smallmouth bass and crapies. However, the real interest is in the stripers, that can well tip the scales over 50 pounds. They mainly eat shad, and stay away from spiny-boned fish like smallmouth, black, rock and largemouth bass. With that in mind, try using split-shad minnows, with the "deep diver" bills, and troll at about 6 knots. Use a fairly heavy weight about 3 feet ahead of the bait, to weigh the line down, and keep the bait appear to be swimming, not being dragged through the water.
Worms always work well with bass, no matter what the size. The larger striped bass will be in the deeper parts of the lake, especially at the bottom of deep drop-offs. They forage through the weed beds and along rocky bottoms, and swim up underneath schools of baitfish (shad), and pick off the slower, lower fish. Try to find the depths at which the shad are schooling, and fish about 10 to 25 feet below the main schools.
If you do use worms, and you should use the larger night-crawlers, use a spoon called the "Lake Claire Warbler". It is a warped spoon, with a harness like a pickeral harness tied behind it. The warbler spoon vibrates through the water, causing noise that the larger bass investigate. They then strike the worms that appear to be swimming through the water like a live snake, due to the warbler's action.
Try it, I guarantee success! I worked out of Luke Air Force base, 8 months at a time for 3 times. The airforce jet jockeys (they know there's no insult there!) took me on many fishing expeditons, and soon started asking to use my "weird, funny-looking Canadian lures". Lakes Havasu and Texoma were well fished, and plenty bass were caught. I was so impressed with the size of the stipers that were being yanked out of Texoma! What a world-class fishery! You are so lucky to live nearby.
Fish on!
