Losing bait

We did some drifting for catfish over the weekend using shad. Most were fresh or even still alive. We lost numerous baits and didn't even realize it. Or, we would get one bite and our bait would be gone. Any thoughts? Maybe not hooking the shad correctly? We only caught a couple of channels doing that.

Dink fish and sandbass!!

Or turtles oh how i hate turtles lol

This-
We fished Bardwell two weekends ago and we caught 3 channels under 6 inches-and some small sandies-
Not sure where you were but that lake has a ton of sandies in it.

I would agree with all 3 above. Bardwell, if that's where you were, has alot of small channels and small sandies. I was out Saturday night as well, not much action to be had.

Yes, on Bardwell. The times we went out last summer we caught some nice keeper blues and a few channels. This past weekend was the first time we had been out. We did try some sand bass later in the day and found one school but they were all small. I guess they can be great bait stealers. Thanks for the responses.

I was missing some bites this past weekend so I downsized to a 2/0 circle hook with a small chunk of shad and started catching some smaller channels and yellow bass. I also had fewer channels swallow the 2/0 than a 8/0

definately drifing through the nursery.

The nursery! Next time take a crappie rod along and toss out a little piece of fillet on a #1 hook. You will find the culprit! Gotten myself out of many skunky situations that way and had fun doing it!