The sploosh of the Chug Bug broke the silence of a very quiet morning on Toledo Bend reservoir.

As my wife, Lisa, worked the noisy topwater plug over a dropoff into the old Sabine River Channel, I noticed that we were drifting over a big school of shad.

Just as I was about to make my first cast, an explosion occurred under Lisa's plug. It looked and sounded as if someone had thrown a grenade into the water, but a quick flash of white with black stripes revealed we had picked the right spot this morning.

While she was battling her fish, I decided to make a few casts, and ended up with one of my own. Now, we had the interesting and arduous task of handling two stripers at once. It wasn't exactly easy work -- but no complaints here. Both fish were in the 10-pound class, and representative of the kind of tackle-busting action Toledo Bend's striped bass fishery can provide.

One of my favorite methods of seeking open-water fish like stripers is drifting, and the best areas to drift can be broken down into north and south on this 185,000-acre body of water. Let's start with the north end.

The area from Pontoon Bay on north to where the Sabine River enters the reservoir can be red-hot. The bottom here has numerous humps, ridges, roadbeds and old ponds.

Anglers should concentrate their efforts on shad found in relation to main-lake structure. Stripers will suspend around these shad at a variety of depths. When the shad are up near the surface, it's possible to catch them on surface lures as we did, but the steadiest action comes on tailspins and jigging spoons.

"Out in areas on the main lake like around Huxley Bay, and a spot locals call 'the well,' which is a little artesian spring you can see on calm days," responded longtime Toledo Bend angler Kevin Boudreaux, of Lake Charles, when asked for some hints on location. "I like to fish a Li'l George early in the month and then move on to a heavy slab to bounce down off the bottom and get their attention."

Boudreaux deems it important to mark the spots where you find fish. "Sometimes they'll be all over," he said, "but on those days when you find them in little pockets, it's good to have some marker buoys you can throw out to find your spot after you drift through them. We like to say they're 'on the spot,' because during those times, they have just a little area they are hitting in."

If the fish seem to have lockjaw everywhere but at such a spot, try positioning the boat there and using a trolling motor to stay in the bite window.

Another good method of taking these suspended stripers up north is by trolling with deep-diving crankbaits along the channels. This is a good strategy for locating fish, and can produce some of the larger specimens you might otherwise not contact.