Here's a tip that I heard from a catfish guide. Fillet one side of the shad and leave the fillet hanging. I guess this allows the shad stinch to seep out into the water and attract those blues.

Anyone tried this, does it seem to work better? Sounds like it would make sense.

I've seen people use many different methods with shad , it's hard to go wrong with any of them . Probably the most common way when using cut shad is to slit them on the belly side . I've caught plenty of blues in the navasota river just using gizzards/guts from big gizzard shad , so just about any method of getting the whole shad , cut shad , or gizzards/guts to the cats will work - as long as your fishing where they're at .

as long as your fishing where they're at... AND the moon is right and they aren't spooked from something and they didn't hear your electric fillet knife and they they are hungry and they don't sense something wrong and the rain hadn't stained the water and... you know what I mean.