Strange night stalk bite last night

[Jumping Cholla Jigs]

Put out the lights and 1/2 hour later the fish were tearing our minnows up. that lasted about an hour until the largest swarm of shad I've ever seen came to the boat and the bite completely stopped.

Why?

[CrappiePappy]

they probably couldn't find your minnows, in all that mess of Shad Else wise, maybe that huge swarm of Shad spooked 'em ?? ..... cp

[bwillaub]

My guess would be that the shad brought with them a few unwanted visitors. Bass, stripers, or catfish maybe? It's just a guess of course.

[Jumping Cholla Jigs]

Hmmm... Well we did catch a couple of "under" bass and one tiny channel cat after the shad showed up. Interesting thought.

[suey]

bob....back in 2004 this happened across from cholla ramp in 30 feet of water to me as well, 2 weekends in a row...

come to find out... a huge school of carp were following the shad and also chasing away the crappie... if we seen carp, no crappie would bite, if we didnt see any carp, crappie bite was on and heavy......... these carp were huge too, i bet they were averaging 16-20 lbs

[joewildlife]

I've seen musky come by and hit shad on the surface=no crappie bite for awhile. dang slimy things!

[skiptomylu]

Put out the lights and 1/2 hour later the fish were tearing our minnows up. that lasted about an hour until the largest swarm of shad I've ever seen came to the boat and the bite completely stopped.

Why?

I have had that happen where the shad are so thick they run into your line and if you jerk up and miss a crappie (if it even was one) and snag a shad. If I do this sometime I will take the shad and use it for bait and usually can get a big old crappie off to the edge of the light.

Some of the missed bites I am sure are the shad running into my line and thinking it's a crappie hit/thump.

However I have also been able to catch crappie when the shad come and if my memory serves me I think maybe the bite then was better right under the light. Probably because the shad are blocking the light to some extent to crappie under them.

Skip

[eddiebhome]

I have also experienced a reduction of hits when the shad get real thick. As someone stated, I suspect there is so much bait out there that the fish just can't find or don't care about your minnow. With that theory in mind I shut off my in-water lights for a while and only leave on a couple of clip-on reflector lights shining on my rod tips. Very often the fish will begin to bite again after a few minutes when the shad begin to thin out. If the bite slows again I will turn on the in-water lights again.

[bobberdown]

I saw the biggest flathead catfish I have ever saw while doing light fishing. he came straight up under the light to about a foot of the surface, turned and went straight down again. That was the end of the crappie for the night.

[FisherMike]

When that happens. Do you think it would be worth the effort to fish way outside of the light? I seems like I watched Bill Dance do that once on a show of his.

We have a problem with alewives up here for about 2 months. They come into the lakes from Lake Michigan and just saturate the water. You can't even catch perch there so thick.
They do however really fatten up the gamefish for later on in the season.