While night fishing a few weeks ago with my homemade green submersible LED lights, I managed to attract a HUGE swarm of shad that kept circling my boat.

Needless to say, there were a ton of feeding crappie hammering them from everywhere. I noticed something very surprising about the crappie that were feeding near the "edges" of the shad swarm. Instead of attacking from beneath, a fair number of crappie would come swimming in on their side, snatch a shad, then point their nose down and then swim away. I've never seen anything like this!

Maybe they couldn't see the bait very well because of the bright light and they where somehow using their lateral line senses to track their prey?

Maybe they were looking up with one eye for contrast?

Maybe this is just normal?