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That’s Shad Not Minnows! by Brad
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Recently, I jumped into a boat to video Chris Wyatt fishing in the National Crappie League tournament on Lake of the Ozarks event. I had been hopping from one tournament angler to another filming them catching crappie for the TV show. There was a dead shad on the deck of his aluminum boat, but I didn’t think much about it.
That’s where the story gets interesting. I took a peak into his minnow bucket expecting to see a bunch of little minnows swimming around, but I was setback with the revelation that it wasn’t minnows in the minnow bucket. In fact, it was shad and not tiny fry size shad, but 3- to 4-inch shad just like the one Wyatt had lying on the deck of his boat. Not only was there shad in the minnow bucket, but the bucket had ice in it. The kicker was the minnow bucket’s aerator wasn’t even on best I could tell.
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Now everything was starting to make sense. At a distance my boat driver had implied that Wyatt must be fishing a spoon for crappie. From a distance it did look like that and because he was retying his fishing line we were unaware that Wyatt was actually using shad for bait on his jig head instead of a minnow like all the other anglers I had gotten into the boat with that morning.
I asked Wyatt about using shad for bait when fishing for crappie he replied, “The crappie were biting better this morning on artificial lures, but then it started slowing way down,” Wyatt continued, “So, I switched over to using shad and started getting bites and catching them.”
Truth is the shad he was using was pretty good size for crappie fishing compared to what the other anglers were using. “Yeah, these are good size shad, but that’s pretty much the size we have in the lake right now and that’s what they have to feed on,” Wyatt continued, “The shad have grown bigger now and are good size for using to catch crappie.” Needless to say Lake of the Ozarks right now has an abundance of shad everywhere on the lake that size in coves, feeder creeks and even in the main channel.
Using shad for bait is unusual as most anglers have either traveled to fish in a tournament or just don’t want to take the time to catch them in a cast net when they could be fishing. Especially now as the professional crappie anglers are only one pole with forward facing sonar fishing dominating the crappie tournament trail. Plus shad are notorious for being hard to keep alive.
But wait it gets better, Wyatt was literally throwing the shad up on the deck of his boat on a wet towel which also had a few pieces of ice mixed in with the shad. The outside temperature was in the low 90’s. It was hot and on the deck of his aluminum boat hotter yet. “I don’t have to keep the shad alive, but I like to keep them fairly fresh,” said Wyatt.
Wyatt kept it simple when rigging. He used a white colored jighead with black eyes painted on it and nose hooked the shad. That’s it a1/8-ounce jighead and shad. While it seems simple it was the little things that made him so successful when fishing this way.
First, he gently pitched the jighead and shad out so it wouldn’t slip or break off the hook. Second, Wyatt made only short casts. Third, he would give the shad on the jighead a slight twitch upward then allow it to fall on a slack line, but not to slack he couldn’t feel a bite. Almost all of the bites came as the jighead and shad were falling.
In the short time we were in the boat with Wyatt he managed to catch several crappie, but none bigger than the ones in the livewell. “That’s not going to win a tournament,” Wyatt noted throwing back a keeper, but smaller than the others.
He used a 5-foot casting net which is an average size net to catch his shad. Catching them wasn’t hard because Lake of the Ozarks is overflowing with schools of small shad during the tournament. Although the profile of a shad is larger than a minnow it didn’t stop Wyatt from catching smaller crappie that were still keepers with the 9-inch length limit on Lake of the Ozarks. “In the end, crappie are feeding on minnows and shad so it makes sense to use them as bait,” Wyatt went on, “Plus it’s a lot cheap and right now easier to use the shad I catch with a throw net.”
