Fishing guide J.B. Bennett is best known for using jigs to take hefty stripers like this -- but he's been known to tie on a live bait from time to time. He caught this linesider below Eufaula Dam on a cold January morning. Photo by Bob Bledsoe.

I am not a big live-bait fisherman.

It's not a snobbish thing, and it's not that I have anything against it.

But it's a lot of work.

It's not the fishing with live bait that bothers me. It's getting the bait and taking care of it in all sorts of weather.

Striper fishermen go to great lengths to catch and keep their baitfish alive and lively. They have bait tanks and aerator pumps and a variety of chemicals and salts and this and that, all aimed at trying to keep their shad healthy and swimming until it's time to hook them and drop them overboard.

When the weather is hot the shad tend to die easily. When the weather is cold the shad tend to die easily. The poor old shad just don't seem to stand much of a chance in captivity.

It kind of makes you yearn for an old-fashioned minnow bucket and a dozen fat shiners that stayed healthy when you put the perforated inner bucket into the water at your feet or over the side of your boat.

But live bait -- especially lively shad -- can be the most productive method for catching stripers and hybrids, especially in the coldest and hottest months of the year.

No matter whether you fish in one of Oklahoma's big striper reservoirs like Texoma or Keystone, or whether you fish in tailrace waters or one of our river fisheries like the Lower Illinois River, using live bait can be the ticket to successful fishing.

Free-lining a lively shad in the Lower Illinois or in mid-lake at Texoma, or fishing a shad under a balloon in one of the tailrace fisheries like Keystone or Eufaula or Kaw, can be just the ticket to filling your stringer with big, hefty linesides. Catching 20-pound-plus stripers in midwinter isn't uncommon, and fresh gizzard shad are often the best baits for the job.

I have always preferred using artificial lures. About the only time I fish with bait is when catfishing, or when I am crappie fishing with someone who is a diehard minnow dunker.

But I can be persuaded quickly to use bait when striper fishing at this time of year.

Oh, I've had some very productive days on the Lower Illinois, and in some tailrace areas, using only jigs. My friend J.B. Bennett of Okmulgee, who operates Jig Blue Guide Service and who I consider to be one of Oklahoma's best striper fishermen, taught me many years ago how effective light line and small jigs can be for catching stripers on the Lower Illinois when winter conditions are right.

But I have also spent some days probing the waters of the Lower Illinois with little or no success while Delmer Shoults and some of the other professional guides there were sacking up big stripers with their clients using live bait.

On the Lower Illinois, live rainbow trout is another popular choice for live bait. Because the Lower Illinois below the Lake Tenkiller Dam is a put-and-take trout stream, trucks from the hatcheries regularly dump thousands of 9- and 10-inch trout during winter months. Big, hungry stripers in that river dine frequently on the tasty flesh of trout.