It's All About the Shad...

........whether we have good quality, and good numbers of fish. I'm sure there are other factors...water quality, structure, cover..but without the forage base, the rest doesn't matter.

I've learned that we not only need lots of shad, but also there needs to be shad of the right size, especially for crappies. So what regulates all this? Obviously a good shad spawn is how we get the numbers of shad...does that mean high lake levels, or low, or is there some other factor? And how do we keep good numbers of the right size? Is less algae what keeps them small? Is it more alga in the spring (for recruitment), and less through the summer a key?

I guess the bottom line to this thread is: Is there anything I, or a group of fishemen can do to help create/maintain a quality shad population? Or is it just luck, or is it something MDC doesn't need/want help with?

I know regulating lakes for flood control vs fish production vs recreational boating is a juggling act for MDC.... how can any of us help?

Fish recruitment, whether its shad or other gamefish, is highly variable and usually at the mercy of environmental conditions during the time the spawn happens, so not a whole lot you or a group of fishermen can do to help shad numbers in large reservoirs. These reservoirs have perfect habitat for shad recruitment, but how good recruitment is year to year is based on weather and water conditions... Mother Nature is cyclical and will produce good year classes when she is good, darned, and ready....BUT, one of the reasons I chimed in on this thread is the help educate anglers about the situatuations where its "not all about the shad"!! Long story short, gizzard shad are HORRIBLE for small lakes, reservoirs, and ponds....I say this so people dont read the first post on this thread and go out with a cast net and catch a bunch and start "helping" out other small lakes that they think need shad in them...by doing so, you are ensuring the demise of the bluegill and crappie size structure in these lakes.....we manage a lot of smaller reservoirs in NW region of Missouri that once had great panfish fisheries, that are now just full of 12" shad, 6" bluegill, and 7" crappie....still decent bass fisheries, but they were decent bass fisheries anyway when the lake had a balanced population and the bass ate bluegill and crappie. Now they eat the smaller shad...dont eat the small bluegill and crappie, the bluegill and crappie keep spawning...dont grow...compete with the 12" shad for plankton, and the only way to fix the problem is drain and start over...and by the way...MDC stopped stocking shad a long time ago, so I suspect the shad get into these lakes from well-meaning people that read things about how great shad are, and feel the need to help out....please dont...and its illegal to do so as well.

Tory is correct on his assessment of shad in small lakes. The best thing is to keep them out! In reservoirs the best that we can do is try and manage water levels during the spawning seasons so that they remain stable to slightly rising. This balancing act is hard and in many cases our hands are tied by policies of the Corps of Engineers. For example, at Smithville Lake we draw the lake down 2 feet each winter to give a little storage buffer going into spring to capture spring rains before releases are mandated by the Corps (when the lake is 4 feet above normal pool). Many years this works fine and shad production has been good. But once the lake gets above 4 feet high, there is no choice. Water has to be released if downstream conditions allow. Smithville lake levels do not fluctuate as wildly as some of the larger lakes and still we might have good shad production 3 years out of 5 on average.

Sorry I didn't specify lake size in original post....I do most of my fishing in the larger (5,000 + acres) reservoirs, and my questions are geared at them. So we get that good recruitment year for shad, what keeps them at 'eating' size? Low amounts of algae?

It's a matter of fertility. Shad grow faster in north Missouri Reservoirs due to increased fertility in the soils which leads to more fertile reservoirs. The more available nutrients, the more planktonic algae produced and the faster the shad grow. Sometimes we will see see "eating-size" shad well into the winter and this could be due to environmental conditions limiting algae production or ideal conditions could lead to a second shad hatch later in the summer. Crappie can generally eat a shad up to 1/3 its length. So once shad get much over 3 inches they aren't avaiable to many crappie. Usually by October they are 4 to 5 inches long in north Missouri Reservoirs and only edible by the largest crappie in the system.

Kill asian carp.. they compete for shad food source.

Great info Mofish! I would have never even considered soil fertility in the equation. Never too old to learn something new! I spent many a weekend chasing shad around on Smithville catching crappie, there was an unlimited supply to be sure.

I think maybe (at least in the case of Smithville), the fertility may be a double-edged sword. Much of the fertility comes from soil in the form of sediment washing into the lake, and sediment is a bad thing if too much comes in. One of the park employees told me (secondhand) that Smithville was designed to be a 100 yr lake, meaning that it would be full of sediment after that long. I'm hoping that there can be some erosion control installed such as rip rap in areas prone to washing in from farm fields to stop this and give my great-grandkids a place to fish. The erosion control put into the main lake basin by the MDC and the corps is a great first step. I'm hoping more can be done further to keep sedimentation at an acceptable level.