Spent the day on Lake Texoma this past weekend had a blast with several friends, we kept 42 with 5 people in the boat.
In talking to the guide he made reference that due to the flood this year finding shad has been tough on Texoma and that several individuals are pulling shad from the bubbles at Grapevine and hauling them up to grapevine to sell.

Any truth and will there be any impact on the vine fishery?

I would suggest the impact would be minimal. Whoever's doing it better have a commercial license or it'll cost them big bucks. From a business standpoint, it's actually not a bad idea though.

There so much shad at that lake i don't think it'll impact it at all.

highly illegal unless you have a commercial license (even then you better cross your t's and dot your i's...

I would more concerned about some sort of virus passing from one lake to another.

I really doubt there really taking enough Shad to hurt anything. I have heard of guides buying Shad from other guides on different lakes for years. Never gave it a second thought.

I have seen these guys out their and from the looks of there equipment they have license. and one thing I can say from talking to these guys they are cool about doing it, not being jerks as far as what they are doing. good business guys/guides.

8 years or so ago when I worked for Silver Dollar, we would go to Lake Dallas to get bait. We didn't sell it, we just used it for our trips. It is just easier for me to get up at 2:00 Am every morning to catch bait rather than drag the boat to another lake.

Can we get the name of the people selling them would make my life so much easy. Iam just trying to learn how to catch stripers on texoma and been skunked 3 time in a row both in my 18' ranger and below the dam can seem to catch shad eather pm if yall can help i also live 15 mins from RR! Thanks

Grapevine shad are magic!
My brother in law caught a 4 1/2 foot blacktip shark on a GV shad a couple of weeks ago. That shark passed up ribbon fish and sardines for Grapevine shad!

I have heard of that in the past. A few years back people were selling vine shad to Texoma guides.

Shad are no problem on Texoma at this time.

They can not catch enough bait with a cast net to make any impact on the Grapevine.Here at Texoma small 1-3 inch shad are not a problem but good 4-6 inch threadfin shad have not been easy since the spawn in June,some days have not been to bad but most you will be throwing the net for at least 2 hours and that gets old quick. Also the last two days the good bait has really scattered since this weather moved in. If I was going to fish Texoma any more this summer I would probably start hauling bait from somewhere. When I get back to Texoma this fall we should not have a problem with bait because we had a good hatch of gizzards this year and they should be 3-4 inches long by October when I get back on the lake.

Has anyone ever thought of farming shad? Would make it a lot easier to find and you could make sure the shad were not infected...if anyone wants to start a shad farm let me know.