This and agree. Haven’t had a shad die off due to freeze in years........jig spoon bite should be good next week. Probably right now for the brave, tough and or crazy to give it a go.

I'm all ears. Tell me about it.

didnt know that this is true...but what im hoping for my home lake now that you mention it. Its ridiculous how many shad the lake has. Glad I get to test this theory in the coming months!

The shad die off feeds the food chain. It shouldn't be enough to kill all the shad, and you still have other species of baitfish. The only "X-Factor" is the White Bass...

This won’t kill all the Shad. Probably not half. My dock is in 30 foot of water and 10 foot down the temp is 44 right now and on the bottom it is 47. Lots of Shad live deep and will survive.
Many will die but not enough to hurt a healthy lake.
I do wish I had the fortitude to go drop a spoon right now but just a trip down to the dock was enough for me!

dont have to, been there done that. ask me how i know, smdh....

I don't have the stats so don't ask me for them but if I recall, it takes a crazy small amount of shad to repopulate an entire lake because of how prolific they are at breeding so there's no way this weather could ever do any real damage to the population in our lakes. And I've heard for years that a good shad kill is always good for a lake in the right condition and it can definitely add to the weight of fish caught for the month following it. I recall Ken A writing something on this several years ago.

Wouldnt the shad just got to deeper water?

I'm right there with the "Shad Kill is a good thing" guys. Wait until you see how butterballed the fish will be coming into the spring this year as they GORGE themselves during the shad kill. Our lakes in North Texas have a major over abundance of shad, its not uncommon to idle into a creek and have the entire graph blacked out with baitfish. Less baitfish means more aggressive fish that set up on ambush points more predictably. I'm not rooting for a kill that decimates the shad population, just one that puts it back in check on the threadfin side. Certainly makes for better fishing overall when the bass have to do a little more that just yawn to get a mouth full.

I seem to recall an article in Bassmaster where they discussed shad having a relatively low nutritional value. Bass eat them because they're plentiful. Force the bass to eat crawfish, perch, frogs, etc instead of shad and, assuming there's enough of the "other" stuff, you should see healthier bass.

I hope they eat a frog in a couple of months.

Heck they may eat a frog in cpl weeks

My big hope is this extended cold snap kills ALL the Giant Salvinia!!

-
lol I wish

It will kill all of it 100% one of the best things to come out of this artic blast.