This year I've learned to catch shad since I can't get minnow locally (without driving 40 minutes). Thought fishing with live shad would be the nirvana of fishing but on Harris yesterday I caught about 20 crappie on curly tail jigs but when I threw a live shad in the same spot I was catching crappie, nothing. Switch back to the jig and BAM fish on. What's up with that?

I can only guess I wasn't presenting the shad right so I'm wondering how to hook them properly. I tried through the upper lip but they didn't seem to live long like that. I switched to hooking them in the back and they were lively as ever on the hook but no fish was interested. I'm baffled.

I had the shad on 3-4 feet of line under a bobber, no weight. Crappie were in about 6-8 feet of water. Maybe the shad wasn't getting far enough down but I thought a struggling shad would call the fish out like a dinner bell.