Fishing the Shad Kill after the Polar Front. Total Smackdown!

Nice!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This time next year. (I'll retired and can fish any day!).

Enjoyed the video as always. Good Stuff!

Boom. Nice job brother

Thanks guy. Video is called fishing the Shad Kill but we went straight past the shad kill and headed to deep water to fish the biomass. Just trying to show guys that there is more than 1 way to skin a cat.

How bad was the shad kill there? Surprisingly, I found no evidence of one this year on Worth at all. Huge schools all over the dam end and not a dead one on shore anywhere. I'm glad too since there was a huge one in 21. They're finally big enough again I can use my 5/8 mesh taped net.

David, I have the same as you at Grapevine. They were fishing Lavon which is a shallower lake than most around here. At Grapevine there's some pretty deep water (60+ feet). I don't know if that has anything to do with it or not. Texoma has experienced a pretty significant shad kill and it has much deeper water, so I don't really understand it myself. I've looked all over Grapevine for evidence and haven't found any. I've been able to find loads of big gizzards in the past 10 days. I'm curious if anyone has any more info on this.

These Shad Kills that I’m seeing and have heard about happen up shallow. Most of our lakes experienced them the past week. The Shad I saw dying were from a spawn we had early fall. 1-1.5” long. Those smaller Shad tend to stay shallow up in coves around marinas, in timber, areas I call the nursery. It’s those small Shad up in 10 ft or less that are at greatest risk of Shad Kill here. The bigger Shad go deeper and survive. I know for a fact Lake Worth, Twok, Lavon, Lewisville, Grapevine, and Texoma all experienced Shad Kill because my guide buddies and angling friends were on the water as they were occurring. Just because you don’t see Shad dead everywhere doesn’t mean there wasn’t a kill. The birds clean them up by days end the kill is only happening in certain areas like the backs of coves and creek mouths.

I think the only shad kill around this area were the shad that stayed shallow and up in the creeks. I don't think our water got cold enough down deep to have a die off. Now if it would have stayed very cold for a few more days then I think the kill would have happened down deep also.

As far as Texoma, the only thing I can think of is that maybe the water temps were already several degrees cooler than our local lakes. It seems like most of the fronts that were happening would stall out in Oklahoma. I know along the Red river there was a lot more ice up around there.

My understanding is that Shad kills happen when there is a sudden change in temperature from warm to very cold. When it warms up the Shad move shallow and when there is a sudden change in temperature the cold gets them before they get a chance to head deep. Gizzards handle the cold a heck of a lot better than threadfins. Had one about 12 years ago that straight up wiped out the threadfin Shad population on texoma. Texoma seems to get them a lot worse than other lakes, not sure if it’s due to it being a little further north or what. Lavon no one was catching them at all in nets, but the population rebounded immediately after the Shad spawn. Before the Shad spawn hit that year we were catching some scrawny fish that’s for sure. It’s likely we won’t really know the extent of the kill until spring. It’s hit or miss, I don’t remember even having one during the major ice storm back about 3 years ago and we got that cold weather last year that they seemed to recover fine from. Again, I think a lot of it has to do with the temps prior to the front and how quickly it hits.