Catching the Shad Kill

BY JOHN BERRY

The shad kill is a natural phenomenon that usually occurs every winter. Threadfin shad are drawn through the generators on the dam and are released into the river below. The conditions have to be just right. The water temperature must be a chilly forty two degrees and there must be high levels of generation. Though it occurs on the Norfork River, it is more identified with the White River below Bull Shoals Dam. The Catch and Release section below Bull Shoals Dam has just reopened following the brown trout spawn. This creates an incredible fishing situation, large numbers of hungry fish coupled with a high protein food source. This is one of the best opportunities to land a trophy trout. Local anglers and others from the surrounding area flock to Bull Shoals to try their luck.

Catching the shad kill is a tricky proposition. The perfect nexus of the cool water temperatures and high level of generation are hard to precisely predict. Seasoned anglers carefully watch the seagulls. When the gulls start keying in on the shad coming through the generators, the shad kill is on.

One thing is constant, if conditions are right for the shad kill, it will be brutally cold outside. The water will also be high and wading in this area will be out of the question. You must be in a boat. With water this high, you should not drag a chain to control your drift. Not only is it unsafe as the chain could catch the bottom and swamp the boat, but the chain could cause damage to the brown trout redds. This could eliminate this year’s population of wild brown trout.

The best flies to imitate the shad are marabou jigs and white woolly buggers. Sometimes the shad come through so heavily that the trout will key in on floating chunks of shad on the surface. Many anglers tie floating shad patterns in white.

Two of my best regular customers Erik and April called me at the last minute. They were coming into town and had checked the conditions. Wading was not an option with the high levels of generation and they wondered if I was available. I said sure and we negotiated a start time.

I picked them up at 9:00 AM. The sky was over cast and it was below freezing. April’s Dad was to accompany us. It should be noted that, April had given birth to their first born son eleven weeks before. Aiden was to stay in the cabin with Grandma. We drove to Bull Shoals Dam and launched the boat. They were generating seven units. To say the water was high is an understatement.

I rigged the rods for high water. This meant long 4x tippets (the leader and tippet were a combined length of twelve feet), an AAA split shot, a huge strike indicator and a heavily weighted fly. I chose three different patterns with the idea of zeroing in on the most effective. April got a large white marabou jig, her dad got the same fly in a smaller size and Erik got a white zonker.

We motored up stream getting as close to the power house as we could with out entering restricted water. We began drifting backwards. I sat in the back and controlled our drift with a paddle. My clients began casting. They were all accomplished casters. With three in a river Jon boat that is critical. Casting a fly line with that long a leader and that much weight is at best a challenge. The difficulty is increased when you put that many fly casters in such close proximity to each other. We would drift down to the bottom of the Catch and Release section and then motor back up and drift through it again.

April hooked up almost immediately. It was a fat sassy fourteen inch rainbow. This was to be repeated several times that day. In fact we caught at least one fish on every drift with one exception. The several drifts where we picked up two or three trout more than made up for it. April hooked up several more times. I changed her dad’s fly to one exactly like hers to see if he could do a bit better.

A couple of minutes later he got a huge hit. The strike indicator disappeared and he deftly set the hook. The trout responded by diving under the boat. When it jumped on the other side of the boat, I got a good look at it, eighteen inches long, fat and vividly colored. Dad applied good pressure and carefully coaxed him from under the boat. I was relieved when the trout surrendered to the net.

Erik was in the front of the boat standing while he fished. He had switched to a white beadhead woolly bugger and was beginning to pick up fish. From his vantage point he could see the dam much better than I could. He noticed that the gulls were getting active. They were feeding on something coming through the generators. Shad were coming through!

We raced up stream to the dam and began our drift. We concentrated on the upper section of the Catch and Release but the action was pretty much the same as before. The shad came through for about fifteen minutes and suddenly the gulls stopped feeding. The shad kill stopped as quickly as it had started. We caught fish steadily all afternoon but there was never a feeding frenzy. The fish we caught were all stout if not fat, well colored and strong. Every fish struggled to their max.

Late in the afternoon my clients were ready to pull the plug. There had been plenty of action but the cold was unrelenting and they had other things to do. We said our goodbyes and I drove them to the cabin. It was their first experience with the shad kill but I doubt it would be their last.