Been reading how tough it�s been to find shad at Texoma, but I don�t think they froze to death like a few years back when the lake had another shad kill.

Is Texoma low on shad this year bc of the flooding and they went over the dam, or would you guys think the lake has the normal amount of shad, just scattered around with the high water.

I haven�t seen much shad flipping around this year, but have only been out a few times so far.

Or, is it because there are 2X as many striper in the lake as there normally is? Have they eaten them all? It didn't get cold enough this winter for a shad kill.

The winter was such a roller coaster of warm mild days followed by brittle very cold days over and over that cycle along with a little golden algae bloom killed off a big percentage of the threadfin is what I believe. The bait and fish would move shallow and then it would get a major cold front and it just takes them time to adjust and it can really stress and wear on them. Both sides of the lake have been monitoring it and although the threadfin count is low According to all the people throwing the nets there still are threadfin in the lake just very scarce. Hopefully more will show up as it warms up. Either they will rebound quickly this is not the first time something like this has happened

Thank you Chris for the info. Hopefully the shad will get busy and produce a lot more so the fish don�t get super skinny

I have noticed that when there is a big threadfin die off the surface action is not as good the following spring and summer

Not fishing big Tex much anymore but at PK the huge striper population has decimated the shad. With all the rains the last few years I bet Texoma is chock full of small stripers. These little guys go right up where the shad try to spawn and just slaughter them. While a big striper can eat more, these 8 -10 inchers come in by the thousands and just clean them out.

Probably not as bad as the shad kill by cold weather a few years back. I caught some very skinny stripers back then.