Insane Shad fishing in Virginia

[VABasser]

Well let me start this by saying I've never been fishing for shad even though the Rappahannock River is a couple minutes from my house.  The shad run this river each year and let me tell you, it's on.  I went down there with some buddies today.  One of my friends dads had the hook up and told us where to go and what to use.  He said he talked to somebody last night who caught 30 shad in an hour; that convinced us to give it a try.  So we went down there with the 'secret' bait and on my first cast I nailed one.  And it never really let up.  We stayed for 2-3 hours until it got too dark to see and I would say, honestly no exageration, I caught about 40 of them, as a group easily over 100.  I don't really know if they were considered big ones or just average because it was my first time.  I would say average sized with some solid ones in there, easily going a couple pounds.  There were quite a few others down there fishing and they caught some but nowhere near the number we did.  At one point I stuck probably 7 fish on 10 casts, it was just unbelievable.  I guess this is probably fairly routine each year when the run is on but for a first time experience, it was sick.  I was using a 6 1/2 foot Medium action rod with a Shimano Stradic spooled with 6 pound yo-zuri ultra soft (sound familiar ).  Maybe a little heavy for them but it was still a fun fight.  We were too busy catching to mess with weight or pics, I'm going out tomorrow maybe I'll take a few then.

[c17Lat]

sounds like heaven!! what lures did u use??

[Redlinerobert]

Sounds like a blast!  What is this "secret" bait?

[camofish]

sweeeet, sounds like a great time. 8-)

Here is one of my top 3 PB shad out of the Hudson River, NY. Got to love the anual striper and shad run.

Fighters like smallies. 8-)

Caught on shad hair dart.

Fish On!

[Dan:]

I was done near the Rapp a couple weeks ago and people were catching shad. I couldn't figure out what to use and I had limited tackle so I didn't catch any. I saw people catching tons of them though, there were a lot of fishermen there that day and a few were catching them left and right. What baits do you use for them?

[camofish]

This is what I use.

Shad Darts - CLICK here to see

I love the ones with the hair skirts. 8-)

[VABasser]

Nice fish camo.  Yeah you can use shad darts, small grubs on a jighead and spoons (thats what I was using).  I don't know when they started running, I just wish I would've been down there sooner. ;D

[bpm2000]

camo that thing is a beast!  cant wait for them to start running up the columbia!

[Redlinerobert]

That is a shad?  Good Lord!