Fish recruitment, whether its shad or other gamefish, is highly variable and usually at the mercy of environmental conditions during the time the spawn happens, so not a whole lot you or a group of fishermen can do to help shad numbers in large reservoirs. These reservoirs have perfect habitat for shad recruitment, but how good recruitment is year to year is based on weather and water conditions... Mother Nature is cyclical and will produce good year classes when she is good, darned, and ready....BUT, one of the reasons I chimed in on this thread is the help educate anglers about the situatuations where its "not all about the shad"!! Long story short, gizzard shad are HORRIBLE for small lakes, reservoirs, and ponds....I say this so people dont read the first post on this thread and go out with a cast net and catch a bunch and start "helping" out other small lakes that they think need shad in them...by doing so, you are ensuring the demise of the bluegill and crappie size structure in these lakes.....we manage a lot of smaller reservoirs in NW region of Missouri that once had great panfish fisheries, that are now just full of 12" shad, 6" bluegill, and 7" crappie....still decent bass fisheries, but they were decent bass fisheries anyway when the lake had a balanced population and the bass ate bluegill and crappie. Now they eat the smaller shad...dont eat the small bluegill and crappie, the bluegill and crappie keep spawning...dont grow...compete with the 12" shad for plankton, and the only way to fix the problem is drain and start over...and by the way...MDC stopped stocking shad a long time ago, so I suspect the shad get into these lakes from well-meaning people that read things about how great shad are, and feel the need to help out....please dont...and its illegal to do so as well.