Guess that fish?

Spent about 10 hours fishing at one of my favorite spots yesterday. Wasn't the best day, our biggest catch was a 15 pound blue, but we caught a lot of 5+ pounders also, so it wasn't bad.

My question is whether or not any of you have any ideas about something that kept happening, a lot. Throughout the day we would get constant bites of varying sizes, but nothing was hooking on. We were using circle hooks with cut shad as bait. The amount of attention we were getting didn't seem to be in proportion with the number of fish that actually got hooked.

I was thinking either catfish too small to easily get the circle hook in their mouths(9/0) or drum. We've caught several drum in this spot and they were all pretty big.
Any thoughts?

Gar. Use a clicker and let them run for a little bit before you reel down and you'll catch a few. Gives them time to swallow it.

i would think gar or channel cat

Ahh, I've never fished for gar. From what I'd read I assumed they would run with it to begin, but I guess they drop it when they feel the weight? We did see several gar break the surface.

If you were loosing bait I would say Gar.

Sandbass

Small sandbass are notorious bait stealers. Could also be turtles.

Yellows are little bait stealers to! Punks

They weren't getting the bait most of the time. Just tugging, then running. I know it wasn't turtles because I'm used to the way they pull.

Turtles.

i think you were just having short strikes by smaller cats! I fished a point Thursday and had the same issue, except i usually run 7/0 circles. I changed to a 2/0 gamakatsu octopus hook, totally changed everything. i hooked up on almost every fish and didn't catch any turtles lol

oh and maybe down size the bait a little and see if that helps!