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The Magic Of Shad

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 2, 2007

Ever heard stories of freshwater anglers catching 50, 80, even 100 bass in a day from public lakes around Florida? Catches such as those seem impossible today given all the fishing pressure, but this time of year a few savvy anglers pull it off regularly.

And how they do it is similar to how saltwater anglers make hauling in snook and redfish look easy.

The threadfin shad appears to be a cross between a saltwater threadfin herring and a scaled sardine, but it's found only in fresh water. And it's this baitfish that makes otherwise wily bass get slobber-knocker stupid.

The tactic was, I think, devised about the time the first saltwater anglers were catching on to sardine tactics in the late 1970s. Several anglers showed me the use of shad on the Clermont Chain, east of Orlando, in 1980, about four years before I came to the Tribune.

But captain Ray Van Horn is the angler who probably gave the baitfish the first wide-scale publicity, starting about 10 years ago.

Secret Didn't Last Long

Van Horn had learned sardine fishing on the coast, and he also guided in fresh water at Lake Tarpon when he couldn't book a saltwater trip. He carried along his bait net to see what he could come up with, discovered that the threadfins were easy to net, and the rest was history.

Van Horn started making legendary catches, and the secret of his scores soon leaked out.

Threadfins are found in most large Florida lakes. They often can be seen feeding on the surface, which makes it easy to wrangle a net full. It's also possible to find them on a depth-finder at times; the schools create a large ball on the screen, and a skilled netter with a heavy net can toss it from the stern and catch all that's needed.

The shad range in size to about four inches, and anything from two inches up makes good bait.

Many anglers use very small mesh, down to quarter-inch, to avoid gilling small baits. Like sardines, the only way to keep them alive is with a big live well and plenty of water constantly boiling through. Recirculating wells kill them quickly.

Find Schooling Bass

The tactics are surprisingly similar to using sardines for snook. Basically, the trick is to know where large numbers of bass are likely to school. This time of year, they're most likely to be over mid-lake weed beds, points, drop-offs or mussel beds, rather than along the shores as in late winter and spring.

The shad anglers take a few handfuls of shad, give them a slight squeeze to slow them, and wing them over the side in several directions around the boat. As the wounded baits wobble and flash on the surface, they turn on the dinner bell for any bass nearby. The surface crashes announce it's time to start fishing.

Live shad are nose-hooked on size 1 or 2 short-shank hooks and tossed to the sites where fish are rising. The bite is usually immediate.

Lakes where this tactic is likely to work now include Tarpon, Panasoffkee, Toho and East Toho, Kissimmee, Walk-In-Water and Istokpoga, among many others. Pretty much any lake that has decent water quality is likely to have threadfins, as well as open-water bass.

To learn more about the method, contact Van Horn at (727) 639-2486.

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