We will see how much truth this holds hopefully hear a story of someone catching a 23" 9+ lber and throwing her back.

As soon as it warms up, they gotta finish spraying to fulfill that “contract”.

This

Makes sense to me. Ponds with minimal shad always have small, stunted bass. Same with over population of deer in the Hill Country. Less shad may make it better for the fishermen, but not for the fishery as a whole. My $0.2

Wow! there are sure a lot of theories/opinions/facts/almost facts/experiences about threadfin shad. My experiences are just that; my own experiences. I'm not sure how a lake could be overcrowded with threadfin and how a threadfin kill would be good for a lake. Forage is one of the 5 pillars to growing big bass (others are water quality, habitat, genetics, and harvest).
In managing and evaluating lakes for the past decade, I have only seen one lake that I could make a case that had too much forage and thus may have reduced the bite. My expereinces are more about private fisheries than public, and i'm not sure what our state biologoist would say about too many shad in a lake. I would be shocked if they agree.

In any case we may find out this year, as I suspect we will see a significant loss in shad in both our public and private lakes this year.

dont really think a shad kill of any kind is good for a lake several years ago they had a big kill at texoma due to a small green algae bloom in the summertime the stripers that were caught didnt have enough meat on them to be worth cleaning.as far as deverting them to crawfish or frogs there is not enough of either in a large lake to sustain a thriving fish population.

Too much forage is not bad for the lake or the bass. Only makes it less likely the bass fishermen will get bit. Preface: my degree was in Business not Marine Biology.

This sounds like a great next video for Ken Smith!

I am asking. Tell me.

I have been in many situations where you can't buy a bite with fish schooling with shad everywhere.

Less shad creates competition and competition improves genetics. A big shad kill may actually kill off some weaker bass but it will improve the gene pool. Bass that are more aggressive will eat and they will survive. The strong survive and lead to bigger and better fish. Ponds that have an over abundance of small bass is because of overpopulation, not a shortage of food. Someone mentioned small bass in a pond being like hill country deer, small. Hill country deer are overpopulated and their is not a lot of competition for does so the larger, stronger, bucks are not the main ones to reproduce. In turn, the gene pool doesn’t improve. Just an old biology teachers humble opinion.

I let my kids bring home our unused live minnows we bought at a bait shop a few weeks ago. I’ve been impressed with how they have handled this freeze. Looks like most or all of them have survived.

How do you know? What do you know?

I’d like to learn more about this theory, especially from someone who knows from experience. It seems counter-intuitive that a healthy shad population would create more problems than we know, so it would be nice to understand why. If you don’t want to explain, that’s ok, but at least two of us are interested in why this is true.

Thats really cool(pun intended) that those minnows are surviving. Typical “bait store” minnows are fatheads, chubs, suckers and shiners because they are RELATIVELY very hearty thus easy to raise, transport, store, resilient to trauma(hooks)and basically just easy to “keep alive”. Threadfin Shad are RELATIVELY much more sensitive to temperatures, temperature changes, trauma, shock, ph levels, O2 levels...just harder to keep alive than bait store minnows, perch, sunfish....Hey, I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express last week!

Let's hope this puts an end to the spraying for the year

His opinion will be just like the others on here. Unless he was able to complete a marine biology degree in the last few weeks.

minnows are a completly different deal than shad are in perfect water temps an oxygen pump in a square tub they will die an threadfins are very weak. there will be a bunch of them die then again they spawn several times a year.