Late update, Friday, 21.April:

I fished behind Bart's from about 4:30-7:30 pm. The water was clear, flowing, down about a foot from Thursday, and with a surface temp about 56º F. A buddy met me, his first time out for shad. A half dozen or so of the usual suspects joined us over the course of the afternoon. The shad were generally cooperative. I had a couple of hits but only one stuck to give me my vitamin shad for a photo op prior to release, and the rogues' gallery landed another 7 or 8, including a double.

Terminal tackle: 5/8 oz drail over 2' flouro leader, chartreuse/orange hammered leaf w/black dot, and red/white hammered silver w/black dot. The red/white worked for me.


Today I was there from about 3-6:30 pm. The water was down about 6" from yesterday, clear, flowing well, and with a surface temp about 54º F. A half dozen of the regulars were plying their trade in shad, and reported some scattered success, and near misses prior to my arrival. Another half dozen rogues came and went, too.

The action was pretty good today! Within the hour, I lost 2 middlin' bucks when they spit the hook literally at my feet. I must have bumped my drag up too high, somehow. After I reset the drag, I easily landed 2 nice bucks on back to back casts. One was easily over 3#, fought like hell, and made some nice long runs. He was so fat that we all thought it had to be a roe, until I gave it a squeeze. The 2nd was a little dinky runt but he had a lot of fight in him; he was hard to handle, LOL! Both were C&R after their Kodak moment. And the regulars were pretty busy, too, about 9 other shad were caught, and a few others were lost. They were all were bucks today, and some of them had shadows, shad that followed them almost to the nets. If I didn't need to get home, I'd have stayed until dark.

Terminal tackle: I changed the drail to 3/8 oz over 2-1/2' flouro leader, and red/white hammered silver willow w/black dot. The back to back shad hit a green/white hammered silver willow w/black dot.

Tight lines!