Fishin' Report. Shad kill

[JimmyT]

Burst of shad have been coming through mostly in the am and with heavy CFS.

Afternoons have been the best and generally when the water drops the fishing is better and mostly with the floating shad patterns or just below the surface. As the CFS drops and the shad quit coming through the CFS rises and fishing on or near the bottom is more productive. The Yo-Yo effect of the water IE: The up and down or pulsing as the SWPA likes to call it must be played like a pro football game. A good eye leads to good fish when this happens. Another eye must also be kept on the gulls as this will let the fisher know that shad are coming through. Timing at this point will make or break the fisherman as the shad move through the conveyer belt of feeding.

Jimmy T.

http://flyfisharkansas.com

[RiverRunner]

Jimmy,

How far down are you seeing shad? Are they all the way down to Tucker and Wildcat or are they mainly confined to the area around the dam & state park?

[JimmyT]

Hey there RR...

Making down to the top of cane island (visually so to speak) but guides have cleand fish as far down as cotter that have had shad in them. A best guess is that there are some shad coming through at night. I would doubt that the fish are moving 10 miles or more to feed on shad and then move back down stream... Sometimes fishing on or near the bottom is more productive than fishing suspended... Which seems to wok better when shad actually come through.

J

[JimmyT]

Yesterday afternoon we were able to fish the floating patterns on the surface with success: Suspended and on the bottom worked poorly. Lots of looks, slaps, and some takes. The trick to this is to not pull the fly away as the fish may make numerous attemps (some take and some don't). Our best of the day was a 5 + lb brown who took the fly right away. The hook up trick to the floating shad is to let the fish take it down a couple of feet. Remember the old One Mississippi or the God Save The Queen then set the hook with a dry fly? Will this is even longer---Twice as long. The angle of the hook set seems to be important but is determined my the fish more so than the fisherman. With the fisherman I had yesterday his learning curve on this method was honed as we did were getting up to 4 strikes per short drift. The previous days knowledge definatly helped with the seconds days success of landing 7 fish ....Good Bows in the 16 nch range. The one brown we did land took off and almost reached his backing. I had to slow the boat down so he could gain some line on the fish as having that much line out almost always ends up with a lost fish.

For those interested in a pic of this fly http://flyfisharkansas.com/shad.jpg will get you there.

I will say that the morning fishing was pretty lousy. We did manage to pull some small stocker type fish out from behind an island just below bruce creek.

4 units in the morning and a full 7 in the afternoon. No shad came through on wednesday that were visible and the gulls never did dive on this day (that I or others I spoke with saw).

This is definatly some exciting fishing.

Jim

http://flyfisharkansas.com