This is the fourth attempt at shad fishing. I always hear about how easy it is to shad fish. It might be easy in the sense that they hook themselves, but learning how to fish in the rocks is a different story.

The first two times, I really didnt know what I was doing and snagged all day. Last year I was using 6 pound leader and lost fish in the rocks. This year I upped it to an 8 pound leader which was good. I was able to free the shad dart from the rocks and the line didnt snap.

The first half of the 6 hours I didnt catch anything and neither did my friend. I was casting too far and my friend was trying to find just the right amount of lead to have a good drift withourt getting caught in the rocks. The last 3 hours, I caught a native King and 2 shad. My friend caught 7. We both lost fish and had short strikes. I have over 20 hours of shad fishing under my belt and only 3 shad to show for it. I will be back next year and hopefully I can double my number caught to 4 haha.

BMGW

6/27/2011 4:02:00 PM

Why don't you try using a bottom bouncer? They were designed to tip toe over the rocks without snagging...

Elijah.Loves.Fishin

6/27/2011 4:19:00 PM

@ BMGW either the weight itself or the shad dart will get snagged. at the bonneville dam, there is no such thing as a snag proof set up that will work effectively for shad. the shad run 3 / 4 feet above the bottom and you need to try to keep your dart in that zone or as close to it as possible.

@ returnofthefish - the shad run this season has been horrible. It's supposed to peak at high numbers for 2 weeks but it peaked for 2 days.. In 2007 between me and my father, we took home over 100. since that year we have not had anywhere near as much success. refer to this site for the next season :) http://www.fpc.org/currentdaily/7day-ytd_Adults.htm

Elijah.Loves.Fishin

6/27/2011 4:20:00 PM

and btw, good job on catching 3, i was there on saturday and i caught 0, my dad only caught 1. in the 4 hours we were there, i saw less than 20 shad pulled out among everyone within sight. sometimes the total count for a day peaks 100,000 shad and it's those days that you really nail them. i got about 57 shad by myself in 2007 which was awesome. getting skunked sucks, especially when you drive 4 hours...

SportRadical

6/27/2011 4:43:00 PM

The water has been high this year, I haven't done very well either. The most I got in a day was ten. I did the best on a 4lb test leader with a 1/2 ounce weight and a medium retrive,. If you let it tick the rocks at all it was snag city ha=) Good luck

returnofthefish

6/27/2011 5:14:00 PM

675k of shad compared to the banner year of 5-7 million shad makes a huge difference. There also wasnt many people fishing the Washington side compared to years past. I remember people were standing 2-3 feet apart. My freind and I had 15-20 feet between us yesterday. Maybe word got out that its a bad run this year. My coworker also didnt catch any a few weeks ago. I might of seen one caught every half hour, so it wasnt lights out fishing or anything, I also didnt see any other salmon caught even though there a few plunkers.

I have been using this website from the US Army Corp of Engineer. Its the count of fish swimming throught the ladders of the dam.

http://www.nwp.usace.army.mil/environment/fishdata.asp

BMGW

6/28/2011 9:23:00 AM

Heya Elija, I make something called the "Banks Bonker" it's kinda a bottom walker without the arm intended to be used with a tri-swivel that I bet would work perfectly for that situation...

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