I will be in Le Sueur this weekend and I'm planning to head down to Madison Lake to fish. I saw a recent post which mentioned shad in Madison Lake and while I'm very familiar with shad in other parts of the country (Alabama to be specific) I don't ever recall encountering shad when I fished the area during high school and college in the 1980s.

I would appreciate any information you can provide about the shad:

Question 1 - Are the shad schools visible on the surface (for example, swimming, "flitting" and/or jumping especially as the day goes on) or do you have to rely on your electronics to find them?

Question 2 - If you can see the shad, what are the approximate length of the shad and school sizes now? In Alabama I've seen gizzard shad from 1-inch up to nearly a foot long depending upon the time of year. In addition the schools will range up into the hundreds and on calm days in the fall it isn't unusual to be unable to look anywhere on the lake and not see schools dimpling the surface of the water.

Question 3 - Do you see walleye, white bass, largemouth bass or gar cutting through the schools or "herding" schools to the surface?

Thanks!

Tim
Seattle, WA

While I have never hit the shad bite on Madison hard, from what I understand, yes you can see them breaking surface, most of the time they are being pushed by fish, and they are not very big, maybe 2-3"s?

Q1. Yes sometimes
Q2. Yes sometimes
Q3. Yes sometimes.


They act like you desrcibed. 1" to 4" long and schools of 10 to 500 in numbers. The easiest way to spot them is when a predetor fish busts up the school and they scatter.

Some times you can see them jump from being pushed by bass!

1. Yes, the schools of shad are visible to the naked eye but not all of them. However, I only fish the schools of shad that are visible to the naked eye. If you need your electronics to see a school of bait fish, you're too deep.

2. The average size of shad is 3 - 6" and most schools are in the hundreds.

3. Yes. The white tips stick out like a sore thumb.

Thank you all for the prompt responses. I'll keep the shad in mind when we are out.

Thanks again!

Tim
Seattle, WA

Bass aren't the only thing that makes them jump!

Good luck and welcome to FM. If you have decent luck with the shad bite in southern MN, perhaps we could have a conversation about the Columbia River. Hint, hint...

Someone wants a 13 lber....

I apologize for not replying earlier but I didn't have my password with me when I checked the site on the 10th before I flew back to MN.

I fished the Columbia once for sturgeon when I first moved out to Seattle. We were west of Portland and all I can say is dang, that is a big & tidal influenced river at that point.

Regarding your 13 lber, I don't think anyone (including myself) would feel very secure in my 11-foot boat on the Columbia with all of 32 lbs of Minnkota thrust to keep us going! A guide is the only way to go.

Now if you are interested in a 13 lb largemouth, that is a whole different story. The current WA state record is 11.57 lbs. Tag Watson is an angler who lives in the Bellingham, WA area (~90 miles north of Seattle) who has caught a couple of northern strain largemouth over 11 lbs.



Tag released the 11.75 lb fish as he had a couple of different scales on his boat and wasn't sure if the fish would be a new record. He later had the scales calibrated and found that it would have been a record. Anyways, after seeing these pictures I'm confident that a new state record is swimming around in one of the small electric motor only lakes on the west side of the state. The state plants large numbers of trout in these lakes every year and I'm sure the bass are eating them and West Coast swimbaits will be the way to go.

Back to southern MN ... I was able to fish Madison on the 14th and half of the 15th. I hadn't been on Madison in about 10 years so we started out looking for shallow weeds for some bass. It appeared that a lot of weeds had died back from earlier this year and we didn't see anything busting the shad so we started both days throwing a buzzbait and a floating frog towards the shore. We quickly found that all of our strikes were coming in shaded areas even if the water was only a couple of feet deep and there were no weeds. We came across an area of thick weeds and since there appeared to be baitfish in the area, we worked the area with weedless spoons and frogs. We had one blowup but were unable to catch any fish. We continued working the shaded area pattern and continued to catch numerous 1 to 2 lb bass with the occasional smaller one. Some of the shaded area were no larger than the area under your car. This same shade pattern held for both days and was productive on the portion of the lake we fished until after noon.

On the 15th there was more baitfish activity in the thick weeds which gave me hope that bass are there. We were able to get a couple of more strikes and actually land one. In addition, a palm sized sunfish was pushed to the surface in the weeds by a large splash which I believe to have been a nice size largemouth.

I hadn't expected the density of weed growth at the surface so my usual slop tactics that work in lily pads didn't work as well. In addition, we may have had better luck working the edges of this dense weed growth earlier or later in the day. I think flipping/pitching to holes in the weeds could be effective but it wasn't a great option for us since we were fishing from an 11 foot aluminum v-hull. Back to the drawing board for other ideas for dense weeds ... frog modifications, etc.

If you are new to bass fishing or fish with somebody that is, the shade pattern is a great way to get your feet wet. The casting isn't as difficult as trying to fish dock shade. We encountered some overhanging trees but if you go with a somewhat weedless topwater bait, you can work on your casting presentation, accuracy, distance and angles while catching some fish. One thing to remember is that with the water clarity, you don't exactly know where the fish are coming from so if you go with a buzzzbait you may want to retrieve the bait along side the boat for a foot or two before pulling it out of the water. You can do the same with a floating bait by stopping the retrieve boatside and letting it sit for a few seconds. We had numerous boatside strikes when we went to pull the baits from the water.

My "catch" of the trip was a 2-3 lb comically fat bullhead on a ABT Lures Shad Rip Bait(Strike King sells a version of this bait as the King Shad). I lipped the chubby guy to unhook him and was amazed at the amount of force he applied when he bit down on my thumb.

Tim

Otter im in on the Columbia river thing. I've thought about that trip as well.

TRB, great report and thanks for sharing.

JW, let's start banging our heads together.