Any tips on fishing in or near shad schools basically just “sitting” in a lake cove?
The bass are tearing them up but it seems I’m competing with 100s of thousands of shad to “get noticed”.
This can be any form of fishing right now.
How about twitching or jerking your streamer violently when you see the bass feeding.
Doug P.S. Maybe a floating streamer.
Your right, you’ve got to get noticed. Fishing the middle of the school is tough.
Try throwing a representitive sized/colored streamer on a sink tip line ( or with split shot) into teh school and let it sink below the croud. It will look like a stunded fish drifting down and may often draw strikes from lazy fish under the school. Another tactic is to throw a similar sized streamer in an attractor color to the edge/outside of the school. FWIW, I don’t have experience fishing to shading bass in FW but have been saved by these tactics when fishing in big bait schools in the Salt. I’ll bet they work.
hth
Ditto to what wehooker said send one to the middle or out side of the school and let it basically dead drift to the bottom and maybe give it a couple half hearted “dying” twitches or strips and hold on. I have caught some massive gar tearing through schools of shad that way. I may also suggest that you use a popper in an attractor or matching color if the school is close to the surface as this imitates a crippled shad and will elicit some of the most violent strikes you have ever seen.
Steve
ditto to the above. I’ve had some frustrating times in saltwater when stripers were busting on dense schools of bunker or sandeeels and my flies weren’t getting any love.
Before switching to a sink tip (unless you have another rod rigged and ready), somethings to try are fishing the edges, especially letting the fly sink. I try not to get the fly line in the school.
I’ve also had luck fishing crease flies, sometimes getting strikes well into the retrieve, that fish have seemed to peel off and follow a while before crashing.
And, don’t ask me why, but I’ve had a lot of luck with pink deceivers in situations like that, when no one else was hooking up. Bunker are silver, sandeels are green, and the pink fly seems to really stand out in schools when the more imitative ones weren’t working and fish seem to really key in on it… baitfish may ball up like that to confuse predators making it more difficult to single out individuals. In any case it’s worked for me on stripers… hopefully LMB will fall for it too. I just don’t show the pink ones to anybody until I catch a fish on one…
Hope this helps!
peregrines
BBW,
Don’t try to compete.
Fish with something that does NOT look like a shad.
Something big and splashy that will get the bass’ attention.
Good Luck!
Buddy