bait fish

[andy r]

I was wondering what the best way to locate early season shad for catfish and the best way to keep them alive. I find keepeng these bait fish alive for more than just a couple of hours can be challenging

[Johnathan]

If you want to find early season shad my best advice is run up a big creek at daylight and try and catch them in the shallow fingers feeding. Just ease up and throw your castnet on the school and you should have no problem. Other than that you can tie and extension rope onto your cast net and use your depth finder to locate them in deeper water. Whenever you see a ball of shad on the graph, throw your net and you may get a few. Shad popluations are always lowest after winter because the hatches havent come through yet but its possible to get them. As for keeping them alive you need something big and round. We took a 50 plastic drum that was used for storing apple cider, cut it in half, cut the top off, shimmed it and pushed it back into the bottom half and then rigged it up with a 300gph areator. They dont get stressed out as easily when they can swim around in circles because theyre not running into the corners all the time. We usually pump out half the water and pump in new water from 8 ft deep every hour or so when on the lake but I dont believe that's necessary. Just get a lot of water in there and I've kept shad alive in my bait tank for up to a week.

[Seedy]

Wow...I've never been able to keep shad alive at all, that's good information. One question for andy though: If you are fishing for catfish, why do you need the shad alive? I keep a castnet in the boat, and whenever I find the schooling, I'll stop and throw for a minute. However, I just put them into a 5 gallon bucket and freeze the ones I don't fish with when I get back. Then I have shad for bait all year round...

[andy r]

thanks, that was goood info, but I was wanting to know how to on a smaller level, something I could place on my boat for a days use. also if you had good tactics for fishing large lakes. for instance I fish harry s truman lake in missoury, I know whare deep, shallow and medium depth locations and where the main chanel runs, which is the deepest locations of the lake. I'm talking 50-80ft deep. if those are key locations for the big ones how would I go about rigging up so i don't snag often, I find heavy line can be verry difficult and time consuming to break off every now and again. once agian thanks!

[Johnathan]

I put my shad tank in the boat, but it definately eats up tons of room. If you want to try to do something smaller just to get a day out of shad try the biggest round bucket you can live with (bigger diameter is more favorable than height) and then use the outjets of your areator system to generate a moderate current ciricling around the tank. With this set up the shad will swim against the current instead of stressing out because they cant swim around enough. However if you wish to keep them alive it is critical that you change out the water regularly or the ammonia levels in your bucket will reach toxic levels. As far as freezing shad, I do that too, but have found that they are MUCH less durable after defrosting. They tend to ooze off the hook for me so I have to hook them through their skull just to keep something on my hook. If you dont want to snag you can try using a drift rig. In this you want to tie a 3 way leader to main line, then tie a weight on an 8" leader to one hole, and a 15" leader to the other. Go to wal mart and get a package of medium sized foam floats (they should be JUST enough to float your hook and bait). Slide one of these onto your leader and tie a barrel swivel onto the end. Onto this swivel tie an 8"-10" with your hook on the end. This way your weight will be on the bottom but your hook will be floated 10 to 12 inches off the bottom and hopefully out of crap that will hang you up. Use a lighter line to attach you weight because if it gets hung you just want to sacrifice it. I use 60 lb test for the last leader and 30 lb big game for everything else. If hanging up is REALLY a problem then make the first leader lighter line and you can sacrifice your swivel float and hook without having to worry about the big guy wearing through the line in his mouth. With a light wind you can use this rig to drift across the deep holes without getting hung and drag your bait right in front of a big one. Best of luck.

Johnathan

[Johnathan]

Make that a 3 way "swivel" instead of leader. sorry.

[andy r]

I usualy run a three way, but the weight tends to hang up on the rocky bottom. the only problem i have with using a float is te water depth I find the fish in and it can be difficult to maintain the depth whilr drifting the bait in the lake channel. I found a decent spot that all sorts of fish hang out over an old road above the dam. it goes from about 60 ft to 14 then drops back off. the bait fish are forced over the road and concentrate them a little tighter as the fish will sit on the down flow side of the current. my issue is a lot of smaller fish hang out there. I want to be able to concistantly catch the larger of the fish just for fun. I found it that a lot of people get frustrated when they see me through back big fish and I just tend to chuckel back at them and say i just enjoy catching them.

[Johnathan]

Ive got the perfect solution for you. Big bait=Big fish its proven.

[andy r]

not always, I've cought lots of small fish on big bait

[andy r]

hey guys, thanks for all the great info and all of your inputs